


The Wind Carries You

by summerstorm



Category: Country Music RPF, Pop Music RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-05
Updated: 2012-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-30 16:20:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How John and Taylor didn't get together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this in 2010 and posted it over 2011, as a WIP. It's still unfinished, and I don't have a completion date in mind nor can I make any promises that it will ever be finished. But I figured I'd put it up over here as well. Title came from a Tristan Prettyman song, and beta thanks go to leobrat.

She's heard this song a million times before, demo and live, even one on one, and she's sung her way through it more than once, and he always had her in mind for it, plus there's that thing about how John performed with her that one time, which made the concept of _this_ look a lot less like a pipe dream.

Somehow, though, she never really thought she'd be recording it, least of all for John Mayer's new album, or with him physically on her radar, watching her from behind the glass panel separating the recording area from the control room.

She likes it. She kind of loves it. It's right away up there as one of the cloud nine moments of her career, even though it's not a big award or a big show or any of the other big things that happen to shape up the list. It's more one of those middle-sized ones that mix business success with personal growth and bliss, like the first time her mom heard The Best Day or that one show of Joe's she sang at back when they were still together and she thought she was—no, and she _was_ happy.

It's kind of weird to think it, but since John contacted her about maybe possibly collaborating on Battle Studies, he's become a good friend, or—something. It's not the kind of friendship she's used to, and he's not the kind of friend she's used to, the kind she'll call up to keep up to date on everything important going on in her life, the kind whose doorstep she can show up on in the middle of the night after a bad day and know she'll be welcome; but she likes to think of them as friends. It's what it feels like they are when she spends time with him, anyway. 

It's hard to explain, but it's there, this layer of like-mindedness beneath all the ways they're different, this layer of, like, affection that means the first time they got the bridge for _Half of My Heart_ to sound just right, she went in for a hug and didn't even realize it had been the first time until hours later. She remembers when she introduced him to Abigail and Abigail side-eyed him, and that's something Taylor's never felt with him. She thought she would, but she hasn't. 

She feels a little unworthy sometimes, in the privacy of her mind, but when she's with him, in the studio testing an amp or giving him varyingly helpful advice on tweaking lines, in the cafeteria pigging out on candy bars and letting him do the fretting while she plucks at the strings on her guitar with her one free hand, in his living room eating cereal straight out of the box and talking about the cathartic properties of writing music, she feels _good_. She feels like she's in a place she can be herself, and better: a place she can be a version of herself she likes to indulge but couldn't possibly be all the time, or around everyone. Having a filter is all well and good, but people sometimes don't realize how comfortable it is to be with someone who encourages you to lose it, to let your mind wander out loud.

It's possible all of that also contributes to how much she's enjoying the _Half of My Heart_ recording process—that, and the bizarre, disproportionate sense of satisfaction she gets out of impressing him. 

Basically, it's awesome, and when she steps out of the recording room and he looks at her and says, like he can't hold it back, "You sound so good," it's—well, it's even more awesome.

Hearing the fully produced, tentatively finished song, however, is an entirely different story.

She's in Nebraska when she gets the files, and it's good to listen to it, because she loves the song and she loves hearing John sing and he sounds great in it, but it's also surprising, in a way, that she's barely in it. Okay, it's more like disappointing, stupidly disappointing. She was going to fly back to the studio to go over it with John anyway, but she kind of hoped it would be all about finishing touches and not an immature argument waiting to happen.

She's glad she gets a few days to cool down. When she sets foot on the plane, she's at least looking forward to seeing him again. She still is after two half-hour delays, a ridiculously long line at baggage claim she was too tired to pull the _I'm Taylor Swift card_ on—not that she normally would, but usually that's a decision based on morals, not on sheer exhaustion—and two trips in the elevator to solve some weird issue with her hotel key card. 

By the time she's settled for a good night's rest, in fact, she's looking forward to waking up to a brand new day, _any_ brand new day. It's pretty sad that her expectations have reached such a low, but given everything, she'll take it.

*

She listens to the song again with him, sitting cross-legged on the floor in a lounge room at the studio while they do some instrumental work for the album. She listens to the song on his iPod, actually, plugged into loudspeakers so large they could crush it like a bug in its sleep if they had motor functions. Cruel analogies aside, she enjoys the visual incongruity.

"You didn't use any of my side of the song," Taylor points out, tilting her head and trying to remark on a fact rather than accuse. "I mean, I knew it wasn't like, the even kind of duet, but it just sounds odd like this."

"Odd how?" he says, picking at his lip and biting it right after, which makes the whole question come out muffled. "Odd how?" he repeats normally.

"Like it's—you're listening to it and it's fine—I mean, I kind of love it—a lot—and you get into it and like three million years into it, I come in and it's like, _whoa, what's a chick doing here?_ "

John chuckles, fighting a smile as he meets her eyes. "Okay."

"Or maybe it's more like _huh, why's the backup so loud all of a sudden_ , but either way it's super jarring if you don't know it's coming."

The smirk comes out full force now. "Admit it, your ego's hurt."

"What? It's not," Taylor says, a little defensively. It's fairly self-forgivable given three days ago she was closer to temper tantrum than to halfway objective discussion. "It was," she admits, chin held high, "but not anymore." She purses her lips resignedly. "It's your record, and besides, I like your stupid song too much to be mad at or about it."

He almost smiles, but then he seems to think better of it and says, "And you're blowing up my pride why?" She shrugs, and he nods. "You're blowing up my pride so you can hit it harder later, aren't you."

Taylor raises her eyebrows a fraction, going for mysterious. "Maybe." It seems like a better answer than _No_. "If I were you, I'd keep my guard up."

"Noted," he says, lifting a hand like an oath. "So what do you suggest we do with the song?"

"Something that feels more... like it blends in?" Taylor offers. "I don't know, who chose to do _this_?"

"It was an executive decision," John recites coldly.

"So, you did," says Taylor.

"It was an executive decision," he repeats, eyes wide and blank on her.

Taylor gives him the round, allows a small laugh to pop out of her throat, shoulders relaxing as she picks a throw pillow off the loveseat at arm's reach and kneads at it over her knees. "Alright, so let whoever chose to do this think about it and come up with something else. My brain's still fried from the flight."

"I see," he says, and leans back, propping himself up on his hands. She watches his fingers tap on the rug, trace meaningless, meandering shapes. "I will see if I can find a better arrangement," he says, dropping the act. "For what it's worth, though, I really like what we did with it. It sounds great to me."

"Really?" she asks, frowning. "Wow, you do not deserve your Grammy collection."

"Yet another complaint you'd have to take up with somebody else," he says, waving a resigned hand at her.

"Like who?"

"Like not me." His remaining hand on the rug turns into a fist, weight shifting from the knuckles to the heel as he leans back further to dodge and catch the pillow when she throws it at his face. "I feel wronged by this most unusual punishment," he says, deadpan. "And undeserved at that. If you thought about it for a second, you'd realize none of this is my fault." As an afterthought, scrambling off the floor and dropping sideways onto the loveseat, he mumbles, "And that the rug is actually an extremely uncomfortable place to sit." The muscles in his arm stretch out in this really cool way as he moves. It's possible Taylor has to blink herself back into the conversation. It's just pretty. She likes pretty things.

She ignores the urge to point out he's only uncomfortable because he's old and says, "So whose fault is it, then?"

"I don't know, who do you want to blame?" It's not a serious question in terms of like, gravitas, but it definitely sounds like he's ready to delve at length in the subject of imaginary, inconsequential blame. Sometimes Taylor wonders if he's high and she just can't tell. Maybe the bizarre way he's half-sitting, half-lying on the couch is a sign. It looks like a mess of jutting angles and it cannot be comfortable under normal circumstances.

She narrows her eyes suspiciously, purses her lips in an attempt to look pensive, realizes she's lost the ability to handle this conversation seriously, and concludes, "Camilla Belle."

"Camilla Belle," he echoes blankly.

"Camilla Belle," she repeats, nodding and imbuing her words with a strong touch of determination. The rug is starting to feel hard under her butt, though, so she follows it up by disentangling her legs and very indecisively trying out several new positions until she settles on folding her legs under herself and sitting on her heels. She kind of wants to change seats, maybe take the armchair by the window, but that would be letting him win a—a battle they're not actually fighting, whatever. It's possible she just shouldn't trust any of her instincts for the remainder of the day. Something in her head is clearly off today.

"You need to stop acting like Camilla Belle is the source of all evil," he says, soft and careful, like he's afraid that's something she doesn't want to hear. "You need to stop acting like any of your ex-boyfriends' ex-girlfriends or current girlfriends or—or potential girlfriends have it out for you."

Taylor sets her jaw. "I was just kidding." She means it, too. She doesn't think that. The look on his face freezes for a moment, and she goes on, "It was just the first name that came to mind," which is stupid and defensive and why is she even defending herself? It's not like he's some kind of authority on morals.

"No, but seriously," he starts, still eying her warily, still sounding uncharacteristically unsure about pursuing the topic, "from what I've heard, it wasn't exactly her fault. I have a fairly terrible track record with this stuff and I've seen this kind of—" He trails off. "All I'm saying is you should pin it on Joe every now and then, too."

She snorts. "I do. I totally do. I'm totally an equal-opportunity blamer," she says, bouncing on her calves.

"Now that's not true. You never blame yourself."

"Because it's never my fault!" she says, feeling slightly outraged.

"Really," he says, not even a question, sitting up and leaning forward, forearms on his thighs, as he locks eyes with her. "Never?"

If he's trying to intimidate her into a confession of guilt, he's doomed. "Not directly," she says, looking straight back at him. He doesn't answer, just keeps his eyes on her in this infuriatingly unexpressive way. "What, you don't believe me? I—am not going to fill you in on the ins and outs of my romantic history at this particular moment, but I assure you: guys at least, unfortunately in some ways, know exactly what they're getting into when they decide to date me."

He shakes his head, face scrunched up like she's crazy or something for saying that. "That's not true, either," he says in a weird voice, an accusation laced with disbelief. He rubs his temple for a second, shutting his eyes tight, and takes a short, sharp breath before saying, just as sharply, "Okay. Let's assume it is true. What makes you think they didn't think they could change you? Or—unravel a better part of you? Women do not actually monopolize savior complexes. There's enough of those to go around. And even if you were exactly what they expected, that still does not mean you can do no wrong."

Okay, so, maybe he was right. He doesn't really want to talk about this, and she's a little uncomfortable hearing it, too. She's not ruling it out as _wrong_ or anything, but she's not—she doesn't feel equipped to talk about it at all, let alone with John, so she diverts the tone into something easier to handle. Smirking, she says, "Are you saying I'm not good enough? Are you saying Camilla Belle is _much better_?"

He eyes the ceiling with a groan in response, rubbing his face with his hands as he falls back into the loveseat. "You really need to stop doing that."

"That may be true," she concedes momentarily, giving it a second to sink in, "but you know what I want to do? I think I should write a song about it! Yes."

"That sounds suspiciously like an Italian mobster kind of dick move," John says. "Not that that's a new concept for you, but just so you know."

"It's an awesome idea," Taylor says. "I mean, thematically. The song is just for closure."

"That's not how people are going to read it," he warns her, but she pushes herself off the floor and goes to grab a guitar.

"Okay, A," she says as she sits back down with it, "I can't believe you're lecturing me on public perception, and B, so what? It'll still help me."

"All right," he says. "Are you going to get started on it now?"

"Yeah."

"Do you need me for moral support?"

"No."

He nods slowly, considering, and rises to his feet. "Well, you're free to hang around here as long as you need until I finish the album."

Taylor tilts her head, frowning slightly. "Really?" she says, because actually she would kind of love that—she still has a few months to go before she can throw herself into her new album, and she misses the feeling of being holed up in a studio, working non-stop on a record. He just shrugs in response, so she nods and says, "Cool. Thanks," before turning back to her guitar.

*

It takes some fiddling with her schedule and more minutes—hours, _plural_ hours—on the phone than she's happy to be when the person on the other end is someone whose name she forgot five minutes ago, or who won't stop asking irrelevant questions, like _why_ she needs to spend so much time in California all of a sudden, and if she wouldn't rather spend some of the spare time she's chosen to dedicate to airplanes and hotels and—and John, partly, but mostly to herself, at home.

Her best excuse comes in the form of not a very good one—it's great as excuses go, and it's real, but it's also something she feels a little sick stretching out to sneak unrelated plans into it. Selena is her friend, after all, one of the best ones Taylor has. She's her friend who stuck with her through an ill-advised but no less painful for it crush on Taylor Lautner, who liked Taylor better and who Taylor's never felt as strongly about as Selena used to. Selena's her friend who's going through a horrible rough patch with a childhood— _sister_ , practically, the way she talks about Demi, and Selena needs Taylor's support and company and hugs. 

And Taylor's giving her that. She is.

Selena, however, leads a busy life, too; even if Taylor could spend every waking hour hanging out with her, Selena wouldn't be able to. Spending more time than planned in LA makes her accessible, which is the important part, and it's not like she's using the rest of that time for evil purposes. She loves her family, both her families—she loves her mom and her friends, she loves her band, she loves being on the road, she loves being home safe—but the summer's been a whirlwind and she feels like she's lost herself in it. That's a great thing on stage, but now she needs to resurface. She needs to regroup, and she can't do that in Nashville right now.

"Uh huh," Selena says when Taylor tells her about her predicament. Taylor may be using Selena's personal troubles in a less than 100% moral way, but she's not going to _lie_ about it to her. "So you're ditching your family for a tattooed thirty-something-year-old guy with a bad reputation, basically, correct me if I'm wrong." Taylor detaches her cup of mochachino from her lips to deny that, but Selena's faster and adds, "It's okay, I mean. I guess it is one of those things that have to happen."

"What?"

"The bad boy phase," Selena says, smiling in a way that makes her face dimple a little, like tiny craters of adorable, deeply evil amusement. Taylor guesses she deserves it. "It's a classic. A staple. Enjoy."

"I'm not going through any phases. You never went through that phase," Taylor says. "I just want a timeout."

"From your mom," Selena says, eyes wide and heavy on her. 

"From everything. I can't process things if they keep piling up on me."

Selena snorts. "And John Mayer fits into this equation _how_ , exactly?"

"He's—recording, it's not like that," Taylor says firmly. "I like being in a studio. It helps me think."

Selena nods, lips pressed together. "Yeah," she says, still nodding. "Sure."

"He's not that bad," says Taylor. "Besides, I can recognize a diversionary tactic when I see it."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She smiles, shrugging, and then her eyes half-close and her mouth contracts into a resigned grimace and her face takes on a tinge of frustration. "Seriously, I don't know what you're talking about because I have no idea what's going on. It's—it's _self-destructive_ to talk about it, I swear."

"Okay," says Taylor, "but you don't want to be alone or anything, do you?"

"No," Selena says quickly. "God, no. We should go see a movie."

"Which one?"

"Seriously, you're going to make me choose?" Selena says in an offended tone, and Taylor smiles. Denial usually works for Selena. Taking her mind off things wasn't Taylor's preferred way to deal with what's going on, but she left room in her plan for deviation. 

"Well, if you—"

"Actually I kind of want to see Cold Souls."

Taylor laughs. "Okay. That one sounds cool."

"And then I can drive you to your secret midnight rendezvous."

"It's not a secret," says Taylor. "Or at midnight." Selena points an accusatory finger at her. "Or a rendezvous!"

"Fine, I'll drive you to your semi-public, late-evening—business meeting, or whatever. Self-therapy appointment." She blinks, and then opens her eyes widely and sticks out her bottom lip. "Can I still call it rendezvous? Pretty please? Do it for my denial."

Taylor lets her mouth hang open. "That's abuse! You're abusing my kindness."

"Pot, kettle," says Selena, dismissively waving a hand. Taylor shakes her head in surrender. "So how long are you rendezvousing for? An hour? Two? Will you two be rendezvousing _all night long_?"

"Stop it," Taylor says, "stop it or it really will be a secret next time," and watches Selena finish off her drink in conspicuous silence.

*

She falls into a pattern surprisingly easy; she has various commitments that keep her from developing any sort of legitimate routine, interviews and private shows and parties her publicist wants her to show up to, but every other day from that first one, as soon as she has a few spare hours ahead of her, she has breakfast or lunch or coffee with Selena, hangs out with her for a while, and then Selena drives her to the studio and John talks someone into driving her to her hotel or back to Selena's house. It's not the independence she claimed she needed, but it's a good middle ground between the comfort of being home, which in short down periods like this makes her _miss_ home more than she enjoys it, and the total uprooting of being on the road for months. 

It seems a little silly, finding or creating a stability that's only going to last a week and a half, but there's something really oasis-like about it, about sitting in a lounge room and writing for hours, or playing Wii with Selena until three in the morning, or lazing around in control rooms while a number of people pour themselves into John's record, watching him sing and complain and give instructions, and listening to increasingly unlikely stories about John from increasingly annoyed sound engineers and techs and musicians.

The third day she comes in, someone's brought in a divan into the control room that she narrowly dodges on the way in, and there's a sheet of paper slapped to the back of it with her name written in all caps in black sharpie. The closest thing to an explanation she gets is when John walks into the lounge room and she holds up the TAYLOR note, tilting her head in question. He spares a look at her in his rush to god knows where and says, "That wasn't me," and runs through the door opposite the one through which he came in.

She glares maliciously at his back and spends something like forty minutes rearranging Bigger Than My Body into an over-the-top country song.

It does catch his ear the next time he rushes through the room, so. Job well done.

"What did you do," he says, too horrified to intonate it as a question.

She plays another verse. She sounds terrible, trying not to laugh at the look on his face, but it only really adds to the baseline of the thing.

"Okay, what do I have to do to make you stop," John says, completely serious. "I'll call you a driver if you're bored and need to leave. We're going to run late today, you probably should go anyway."

Taylor shakes her head and makes a negative noise. "I'm good." Truth is, she wasn't expecting a blackmail opportunity. She has no ammo at the ready.

"I have two minutes, I have time to call just about anything for you. Takeout? Books? A hooker? It's clear you need a distraction."

Taylor scrunches up her nose. "You disgust me," she says. "No."

"You sure you don't want a driver?" he says, less high-strung-sounding now she's put the guitar down and isn't screeching through his lyrics anymore. "Because I kind of want a beer, and I don't assume you'll let me drive then."

She reaches slowly for the neck of her guitar.

"Fine," he says, turning to leave. "Don't kill any more music while I'm gone."

She winds up falling asleep on the divan. The last thing she remembers is John pointing out the beat in some drums section is off, and proving it by singing the portion of the song that's messed up the way he actually wants it to sound.

She comes back to the land of the aware to the sound of his voice, too, this time saying, "Taylor, wake up." The control room is empty, but there are things still around, like the guys are taking a break. She wonders if John kicked everyone out just to wake her up. 

"Don't mind sleeping here," she says, groaning and burying her face in the back of the couch. She can't breathe very well, but it's okay. It's comfy. 

"You don't know what you're saying, come on." John rests a hand on the arm of the divan closest to her head and tugs at her shoulder until she turns, squinting up at him. 

"Dude, I've slept in a studio before," Taylor mumbles, full of foggy bravado. "The good old days of low budget and stuff. Perfectionism."

"You're not making sense," he says, and she lets her eyes close down, but opens them again when he pinches her nose.

"Hey!" She pulls back, which makes her head hit his forearm, which apparently is enough of a wake-up call for her to manage sitting up. "I really don't want to move," she says, stretching out her knees. Her bare knees. Her sundress is —oh, god, it's totally ridden up over her butt. There's a very clear flash of purple cotton under her hips, where the hem of the dress has moved up the most. She scrambles to cover herself, and sort of wakes up in the process, but not enough to feel capable of standing up on her own. "Can you, like—"

He tries to pick her up, sliding an arm under hers, along her shoulderblades, and going for her knees next, but she wriggles out of his hold before it's too late and just lets her legs slide off the divan until her feet are on the floor. She does lean her head on his shoulder, though, and once she stands, his hand comes down to her waist.

It's weird. It's not weird because it's weird; it's weird because she kind of feels like that hand should be a little lower, like that hand is forcibly holding itself higher than it wants to be. She almost feels it there, on her hips, the ghost touch of his fingertips on her ass, and not in a scary, please-don't-let-this-happen way. It's a weird thing to think about John of all people; he's become a good friend to her, yeah, but he's old enough to be, like, her uncle. Maybe that's it, she thinks, how people keep _reminding_ her of that fact, like it's not possible that they're just friends and that is how she likes it. After all the questions and the rumors and the assumptions, it just had to cross her mind at some point. They've all grabbed that possibility and wound it up like an alarm clock, and now she's thinking about it. That's all there is to it. That, and she's so sleepy that the idea of holding an arm high on someone's waist just to be appropriate seems like it would require more energy than she's currently willing to muster up. 

There should be a button to switch off your brain until you're awake enough to be emotionally coherent. 

She hangs onto him in varying degrees of dependence as they make their way to the ground floor. They're nearly out on the parking lot when he carefully disengages his arm from her waist and says, "The physical contact must now come to a halt." She raises an eyebrow at him. "Before someone sees it." At least she's fine enough to stand on her own two feet without anybody's help. 

"Do you seriously think helping me out to your car is incriminating?"

"Yes," John says, and Taylor feels obligated to agree. People read all sorts of things into everything. "I don't want to supply anyone with dating rumors right now."

Taylor yawns and tilts her head back, stretching her necks, trying to shake off the drowsiness. "You really think I'd date you?"

"You don't want the answer to that," he says smugly, grabbing his car keys from his pocket.

"Seriously?" Taylor says. She regards him with raised eyebrows, like he's offended her on an intellectual level. "That is just wrong."

He seems to study her face as they walk out, but then he just says, "If you fall asleep in my car, I'm leaving you there," and gets in and unlocks the co-pilot door for her.

She practically falls in. It's not her most graceful moment, but she recovers her composure as she sits up and shuts the door. 

This isn't new. She's not prone to lapses in coordination or anything, but she's been in a car with him so many times before, in this exact position, sitting in the co-pilot seat and watching his hands on the wheel out of sheer inertia, because it's too late to do anything productive and her eyes just seem to be most comfortable resting there. It's not new, so it's a little nonsensical that she suddenly feels self-conscious about it. This isn't even the first time they've joked about the tabloids' penchant for assuming "relationship" out of "standing side by side." It's not a topic she'd ever think to veto. They're closer now, as _friends_ , than they used to be, but that doesn't change anything, just that he's not as intimidating anymore and she's more comfortable starting conversations. 

So she really doesn't understand why she feels so hyperaware of the silence, of the completely normal distance between them. Nothing's out of the ordinary. He's jamming the heel of his hand against the wheel, which she's seen him do a million times at red lights, but tonight it occurs to her that this could look just like the end of a date. It occurs to her that the motion is abrupt, forced, like each tap is a nervous reaction from trying not to be improper—like helping her walk down a couple of hallways filled up the quota of touching they're allowed to get from each other, and now, one way or another, he has to keep his hands to himself.

The thing is, that's not supposed to be a—a thing. It's not like there's some kind of spell that will break if they touch more often, and, come to think of it, she wouldn't exactly mind if his hand jammed on her thigh instead of the steering wheel. That would actually be—

That would actually be all right.

Okay, _that_ should not be a happy, content, excited thought. It should be a terrifying one. It should be—it should elicit the kind of feelings she's too tired to go through right now. Way too tired. 

Maybe she'll see it in the morning. Maybe then she'll realize what an awful thing to daydream about that is. Or maybe—maybe she'll still think a fantasy won't harm anyone. 

She glances over at John, out the corner of her eye, then looks away, ducking her head into her shoulder as she turns to the window. Something in her stomach feels electric. It's sleep deprivation, probably. It's something she knows she can push down, even if she doesn't want to right now, even if she feels like a total creep sitting next to him and sneaking looks at his hands and his mouth and thinking 'maybe,' picturing 'maybe,' _feeling_ 'maybe' all over her skin. 

It's okay because, like everything else, that maybe is something she's made up, something she'll shed off in the morning, when she's worn it out and slept through the remnants of her ridiculousness. Right now, she clutches the outer edge of her seat, and tightens her other hand on her thigh. She doesn't want to wake up.

*

Taylor doesn't know if it's a conscious decision on John's part, like a rule about not running work into the wee hours of the night two days in a row, but the next day, she's sunbathing in Selena's pool when he texts her he's wrapping up early and taking the rest of the day off, but he'll be home if she's bored enough to swing by.

She has no idea what possesses her to show up. Selena doesn't buy her excuse that she's going to the UK in a few days and then it's back to touring non-stop, mostly because it doesn't answer her question; if all Taylor wanted to do was hang out in a recording studio with someone who wasn't an inherent part of her life and the studio part is not a possibility today, Taylor could just stay with Selena.

Taylor doesn't think about it too much; she just goes up to Selena's room and changes into her shirt and jeans, brushes her hair into submission and stops looking in the mirror before she starts regretting not having brought her makeup bag with her. 

When she gets back down, Selena—who doesn't even seem mad Taylor's leaving all of a sudden—takes the opportunity to mock her.

"You visit me in Nashville all the time," Taylor points out.

Selena makes a face that makes her look all of five years old. Then, she sobers up and says, "No, seriously, if you're like—if you were into him, you'd tell me, right? Because I have a whole list of reasons why you shouldn't pursue that that I think you should hear. If it ever occurred to you to pursue him."

"Otherwise I'm better off not knowing?"

"Otherwise they might have the opposite effect," Selena says. "It's a double-edged sword. Certain bad things happen to look good on paper."

Taylor tilts her head thoughtfully. "Are you sure this isn't all you? It kind of feels like you're projecting."

"Please," says Selena, and throws her car keys at Taylor from the kitchen. "You drive yourself."

"Thanks," Taylor says, and heads for Selena's car.

*

So maybe it's a little off that she's spending so much time with John. Or, like, that she's spending so much time _near_ him, because it's not like they actually talk that much in the studio. And there are always people around, and most of their conversations barely stretch out long enough for Taylor to try to keep his ego in check. It's really just some of the rides home that she really spends with him. Beyond that, in terms of how she's seen him nearly every day for the past week, she hadn't really thought about it. You don't read into things when they're _normal_ , whether they look it from the outside or not. It's not imposing if he asked, and it's not too much if she's looking forward to seeing him. She looks forward to seeing Selena, too, and Abigail, and Hayley, and her brother, and all those relationships are inherently platonic; this one doesn't have to be any different.

She feels even more sure of this when she gets to John's house and he just opens the door, says hey, and walks back in, like it's totally not a big deal that she's around. If it were, he'd like, invite her in with words and wait to close the door behind her, like Tay does. Like Joe used to, at the beginning. 

They end up eating pizza while watching awful reality TV reruns, and after Chad shows up only to leave again, she suggests XBox. It's the least romantic thing ever. Even being thoroughly ignored by him at the studio is a more charming scenario. She just looks around and sees it and it's like, whatever, she feels like doing something with her hands. He raises an eyebrow at her, and she just shrugs.

At one point, after something like an hour of Halo, he starts humming something. 

"Is that new?" she jumps, because she's kind of bored of shooting little people. Or more like starting to feel slightly worn-out and tired. 

He shuts up instantly. "Is what new?"

"Wait, was that what you were writing last night? I heard something at one point. Something _new_. Or, new to me, or whatever. When Chad was messing with Heartbreak Warfare."

"I don't know what you're talking about," John says blankly, picking up the joystick from the coffee table. Taylor launches for it and manages to seize it out of his hands before it's too late.

"No, hey, I heard something, it had _potential_ ," Taylor says, nodding eagerly to grab his attention, trying not to laugh. "There was this one line—it reminded me of your marijuana song. This one could be, like, a sequel. The pothead becomes a pretty butterfly." She flaps her hands until the movement spreads to her elbows, and before she knows it she's nearly on her feet, trying to take off from the couch with her arms as wings. He eyes her weirdly; she shrugs, lets out a long laugh and collapses back on the couch. She hands the joystick back to him, but he's already picked up the other one. "Oh my God, I'm so tired."

"Are you too tired for a rematch?" John says. "I'm offering you one. Out of the goodness of my heart."

Taylor narrows her eyes. "That is so unfair," she remarks, "but yeah, okay."

She loses ridiculously. It's actually kind of so bad it jumps over sad and crashes through funny into meaningless. She makes an effort at first, but then she just leans back and occasionally her thumb happens to press the right button at the right time and things get shot. It's really not her game.

"Well, that was really soothing," she says, grabbing the pillow behind her back and making a burrow for her face out of it against the armrest of the couch. 

"I could say the same thing," he says. She wonders if he's implying she made it really easy for him to win. He probably is. That is just sad.

"Do you get any satisfaction out of beating someone who's so tired she can barely stand?"

He seems to think it over, and answers, "Yes."

"Well, here," she says, and throws the joystick into the couch. It falls near her knees, and she pushes it further away with her foot. "Your enemies are sleeping. Ambush."

To her surprise, he does take her up on that. He says, "You got anything better to do that doesn't require moving?"

"Guess not," she says, "do you prefer being kicked or head-butted?"

"Is there an option for neither?"

"I'm just—" she begins, pushing herself into a sitting position. She shifts around until she's the opposite way from how she was sprawling before: now she's tucked her feet under the pillow she picked out for her head, which has ended up folded into the corner of the couch, and her weight is evenly divided between the seat of the couch, the back, and John's side. She leans her head on his shoulder partly just to be a nuisance and partly because it turns out to be more comfortable than it looks. 

"I can't play with you blocking my arm like that," he says, but he doesn't make an effort to move, and neither does she.

She's not sure when she dozes off. She just does, somewhere between an angry red game over and John switching out the joystick for the DVD remote. It's not so much sleeping as half-conscious napping; it can't be more than twenty minutes before she stirs out of it. Her head is on John's lap now, and one of her arms, the one that isn't cramped beneath her side, is slung over the edge of the couch, and her fingertips are brushing the floor. When she moves her hand, her nails catch on some strands of the carpet, and she groans, and she only notices the fingers on her ear because they fly away instantly, lingering for just a second along her jaw before vanishing entirely. She wonders for a minute if it was just a coincidence, if she woke up at the exact moment he accidentally touched her ear, or if he's been doing that for a while.

It's strange. She's not sure what it is, but the feeling of that contact takes forever to fade. 

"I'm going to stop sleeping on you any time now," she says, and makes an effort to sit up. 

"Do you want a ride back to Selena's?" His voice is quiet. The TV is off. Maybe he was trying to wake her up by touching her; that would make sense. She squints, pressing back into the couch, sort of hoping it'll swallow her back into sleep. It doesn't, so she shakes her head. "You can't sleep on my couch," he says, voice rising up to normal. "Trust me, it's hell on your muscles."

She tries to prop herself up on her hands, and gives up in two seconds flat. "Can't move," she mumbles, "too tired."

She must look really pathetic, because next thing he says is, "Guest room?" and she nods her approval. "You know where it is, right?"

"Hm-hm," she says to confirm, and tries to lean forward again. Her hand ends up on his thigh, and he flinches, which is—also weird, but whatever, she flings her arms around his neck anyway. "Can you carry me there?"

"You're kidding," he says, but she doesn't move.

"Please?" she says, and it should sound childish, but her voice echoes bizarrely low and grown-up in her ears. She feels self-conscious, suddenly. 

"You're really not endearing yourself to me right now," he says, but finally his arms envelop the back of her knees and her shoulderblades, and she's being lifted. She hums under her breath and lets her face fall into the space between his neck and shoulder.

Her stomach does a backwards flip when she realizes she can hear his heart beat.

It means the room, the _house_ is silent. It means they're alone, and in a flash she understands Selena's concern, in a second her denial crumbles, because they're _alone_ and she just asked him to carry her to bed, and he's doing it, so easily, and she feels ridiculous and enthralled at once, hyperaware of his body heat, of the way her side presses against his stomach.

When they reach the guest room, she tries to amend the situation by saying, in her sleepy-drunk haze, "Are you seriously carrying me to bed?" It would be more effective if she didn't mutter it into the collar of his t-shirt, if the words didn't come out so slowly and so devoid of purpose or determination.

He snorts a laugh. "I think the question you should be asking yourself is, did you seriously puppy-eye me into it?"

"I feel no shame," says Taylor, solemn, except that's when he lowers her onto the bed and she does, she does. Being carried through a couple of rooms and a hallway is fairly natural, but being deposited on a bed—even if she's fully dressed, even if it's just over the bedspread, even if it's for all intents and purposes just because she was lazy—brings out something in her, this desire to hang on, to cling onto his shirt, this part of her that screams louder and louder and tries to coax her into holding tight, into taking him down with her. 

It's not that she— It's not going to happen, sleeping with John, not now, and she's thought about it before, maybe, in passing a time or two, but this— She _knows_ that she'd want to, now, with startling clarity. She doesn't _intend_ to do anything about it now, or really ever, but if she was a little less careful, if he was a little less burned-out—

His hands still on the back of her knees before letting go, and her forearms haven't left his shoulders all the way, and for a moment she thinks maybe he's going to—maybe—but he's not looking at her face, he's looking at her legs to make sure they won't cramp if she goes under as soon as her head touches the pillow. 

She feels her cheeks heat up. God, she's ridiculous. She's ridiculous, and this is absolutely the last time she doesn't go home the second she starts feeling sleepy. The last time. She couldn't take another. Twice is much more than bad enough, and it's not worth it—not leaving isn't worth developing a stupid crush, isn't worth feeling out of breath when John squeezes her thigh before saying good night, his hand chaste as can be. Solid and reassuring and—definitely not meant to wind her up, to make her wish for—no. 

She tries to watch him leave, pull herself out of that haze, but her lids shut down before he's all the way out.

*

She wakes up with the sunlight, clothes wrinkled, skin full of ugly lines, and finds John in the kitchen, staring down the espresso machine.

"Can I—" she starts, gesturing towards the fridge, covering her mouth when the words fade into a yawn.

"Feel free to raid the kitchen."

She picks up a bowl and milk and a box of Cheerios and eats breakfast leaning back on the counter, not really talking. It's not entirely uncomfortable. It's actually kind of okay, because all she gets from him is general exhaustion, not anger or worrying or discomfort. Once he gets some coffee in his system, he asks her when she's leaving for England, and they talk about his record, and her tour, and then she's in Selena's car, rummaging in her purse for her phone because she completely forgot to call Selena to say she wasn't going to drive back until morning. 

After that, she spends a couple of days in Nashville, and then there's England, and it turns out life post-guest room incident isn't that bad, mostly because she somehow, thankfully remembers it too hazily to regret it in depth, and John hasn't mentioned it, and clearly that means she can pretend it never happened.

*

A couple of weeks after she gets back from England, she goes on this kind of date, kind of not with Tay, something like breakfast, only after dinner. They go to this cute little coffeehouse that is right up her alley and Tay would probably be mortified to be seen in, and she has dinner dessert with a cup of hot chocolate, a slice of this cake that's half tiramisu, half strawberry pie. It should be disgusting, but the tastes just blend in her mouth, and she starts thinking about how it never feels right with Tay, never feels like it's going anywhere, even though he's really nice and he goes out of his way to please her even when he doesn't have to, and she likes him a lot, she really does. But it can't be a good sign that they've been sort of seeing each other for months and she still can't take the 'sort of' out. It's still a solid part of the label.

Then, about an hour later, he asks about the Half of My Heart thing, apologizing for not having done so earlier, even though he really had no obligation to care about that at all, especially because the last time she talked to him and mentioned this was over a month ago.

"It was good," she says, quietly, looking at the table, at her hand on her cup, "it was fun," and everything seems to come crashing down at once. "Pretty much what you would have expected," she tries to add, but halfway through her voice breaks down and she feels out of breath, panicked, and she winds up crying into his collar, the whole scene barricaded from the rest of the customers by a menu he puts up before their faces. 

"I'm not going to ask if you're okay," he says carefully, and she laughs a little, grabbing a napkin from the little plate on the table to blow her nose and try to compose herself.

It's bad. It's so bad. The thing with John, it can't happen. It has to stay platonic. It can't be acted on. It's not the realization that she must have feelings for him to start crying out of nowhere that boils up in her stomach like a rollercoaster of frustration and sadness and reckless need; it's not that. It's that it doesn't matter if she sees John as someone she wants now, not as an imaginary possibility, like a bizarrely attractive fictional character you know you wouldn't like in real life. That shift doesn't matter at all. There's no way it's mutual, for one thing, and even if it were, there's no way it could ever happen, because things don't work like that for her, because it will end badly, because she can't let herself fall into that, and the realization hits her mid-thought, mid-sentence, mid-feeling, and completely sends her off the rails.

She uses a new napkin to dry up her eyes and says, "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry about that. That was so weird."

"Yeah, I can't disagree with that," Tay says, and his brow furrows, expression turning a little wary, skeptical of something she can't really figure out. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Yeah, actually," she says, nodding, "I kind of do," and laughs softly. "But I can't. You're spared. This time."

"Are you sure?" says Tay. "Because anything you need — I'll even file a restraining order for you if you want. Just say the word." He's got a lopsided smile on his face, like he's kidding but not really, like he'll take her seriously if she asks for anything like that, and she shakes her head.

"God, no," she says. "Okay, it's not that bad."

"Still," Tay says, shrugging, and covers her fist on the table, hand warm and comforting despite the way he has to stretch his arm all the way to reach it now she's slid back around the table and he's still sitting on the other side. He could lean forward, but he stays where he is, like he's either terrified she might scratch his face off if he's close enough, or trying not to choke her, trying to let her have some space. 

Maybe it's a little bit of both.

She opens her hand under his, lacing their fingers together, and returns the smile he offers her. She goes with it when he changes the subject to the tribulations of navigating Twilight fame, and she hopes holding on tight isn't leading him on in a way it shouldn't, hopes it doesn't suggest anything it shouldn't. Sometimes, with Tay, it feels like the usual roles are reversed, like he's waiting for her to do something, to label them, like the one filled with dread by the prospect of being boyfriend and girlfriend is her and he's hanging on by a thread, dreading her inevitable escape instead.

*

The next day, she receives a bouquet of bright yellow daisies. The card has one printed on top, blossoms coyly hiding its face, and on the inside, there's a drawing of the same daisy, only its blossoms are spread out and the center is a smiling face. All the card _says_ is 'Cheer up, emo kid. —T,' which is really more than enough.

She shows up at John's house with her sparkliest guitar and a daisy in her hair later that afternoon, ready to force herself out of this stupid emotional funk she's fallen into, like you would if you were to, like, confront a phobia or something. Head on.

"I see you finally got your wings," John says, deadpan, as she steps into the hall.

"That's angels, not fairies," Taylor points out. "But yes, I do feel magical today, thank you for noticing."

"Well, if it doesn't violate any magical codes of conduct, there's some warm, delicious Thai waiting in the kitchen. You're welcome to join me," he says, already walking into the house.

"Come on, you're not even going to offer to help?"

"You're not carrying that much stuff," he says, but stops on his tracks and takes a look back at her first, which is more than she expected.

"Yeah, but it's like, the gentlemanly thing to do," she retorts, pulling the guitar case strap over her head, holding one thing—the guitar and her purse—in each hand.

He looks down at himself, frowning. He makes a whole show of inspecting his body, down to staring at his fingertips for maybe all of five seconds, and then he lets his arms drop back to his sides and shrugs in what she assumes is a particularly ungentlemanly manner.

"You're mean," she says, her smile betraying the façade a little.

"And yet you keep coming back for more," John says, heading for the kitchen again. This time, he doesn't look back when he adds, "I eagerly await the day you realize there's a big, unrepentant masochist inside you."

" _And_ delusional," she remarks, swinging her guitar case over her shoulder to carry it into the kitchen. She leaves it resting against the wall near the closest door to the fridge, and drops her purse on the kitchen island as she sits up on a stool.

To his credit, he goes for the cupboards and drawers right away, handing her a proper plate and some cutlery before she has to ask, and leaving a handful of napkins by the cardboard boxes.

"Thanks," she says, though it's one of those things, those pleasantries that feel incredibly superfluous when she's with John, not unwelcome but unnecessary. As if to prove her point, he doesn't reply; he just takes a stool opposite her, searches through the contents of a few boxes and finally pushes one towards her. "Oh, I love this," she says when she peeks in, and empties most of it into her plate.

John walks her through the rest of his order, which is long and probably enough food for four people, pointing at the respective boxes as he goes, and Taylor's barely gotten two bites in when he asks, "So where did the daisy come from?"

Taylor bites her lip and traces the outline of the daisy stem along her hair, smiling as she looks up. "Tay sent me a bunch."

"Tay? The Lautner kid?" Taylor nods around a mouthful of food. "What is it about that kid?" John asks, looking truly bemused. 

"What do you mean?"

"He's average-looking at best, and he's known for playing the rejected love interest in the worst crap ever put on film. It doesn't seem like he has that much going on for him."

Taylor frowns. "He's very sweet," she says, nodding for emphasis, because Tay is a great guy, and she doesn't like hearing people talk crap about him. Tay is awesome. "And he's not average-looking!"

"Average-looking is not an insult," he retorts. "I look average-looking to me too."

"Yeah, could be taken as an insult if that's your baseline."

"At least I didn't send you daisies," John mentions, like that's some kind of high ground he's achieved.

"And that could be taken as an insult to you," Taylor says, smiling saccharine-sweetly.

"Seriously," begins John, solemn, "there is no worse gift in the world than live flowers."

"Now that is not true," Taylor says.

"Just look at it this way: someone spends a bunch of money—even if they have money to spare, that's not the point—on delivering a bunch of plants. Now, if it's to an average person, it's not as bad, but we're talking about you here. You're in the music business. You're constantly moving. Basically, 'Tay' sent you a bouquet of yellow daisies that you're going to look at for seven minutes tops, five of which will be the ones you spent at your hotel just now setting them up in a pretty little vase. By the time you get back, the flowers will be long dead. And hopefully in the trash, if you have good help. It's useless."

"It's nice! It's _romantic_. It's traditional," Taylor says. "It's not an investment, it's about putting a smile on somebody's face."

"You can put a smile on someone's face with something relatively useful," John says. "Something they'll use. Something they'll eat—I'm all for chocolates, because those die for a reason, and not out of your watch. Something they'll wear, even if it's only once."

"I'm wearing my daisy," Taylor says.

"We already established that's because you're five," says John. "I wouldn't modify my general gifting theories to accommodate your randomness, and I would bet good money Taylor Lautner didn't see the daisies as potential hair accessories." 

Taylor shakes her head. "If that's your outlook on life, it's no wonder you're stuck writing with me."

"I would personally say it is kind of a wonder," John says, standing down to throw a few empty containers in the trash, clear up the island. "I wonder why I have to put up with you every time I see you. Sometimes even when I don't."

"Yeah, well, I have an impressive tolerance for jadedness." He raises an eyebrow at her. "I like to think it's because I have so little that, when I'm exposed to it, it has nowhere to hold on, so it doesn't stick."

"And you want to test that theory?"

"What good's a theory if you don't test it?" she replies, fork halfway to her mouth, and doesn't say anything else for a while. She's kind of hungry, for one, and she always starts feeling a little self-conscious after conversations like this, where she doesn't want to forfeit her turn and speaks before thinking and barely knows what the words coming out of her mouth mean, or if they even mean something.

The question hangs between them for that while, starts feeling in retrospect like she threw a challenge, though she's not sure whose hand it is in to accept it. It hangs in the glances he hides from her and the brush of his arm against her hand when either one of them leans in to grab something. It stays with her, and that means she thinks about it, and realizes she does now: she would like to know if her completely random theory is any good. She'd like to know if it's possible to be with him; she'd like to know if it'd be good.

So it's definitely not a hundred percent platonic, after all. She might as well accept it if she wants to shut it down, and she definitely should accept it if she doesn't.


	2. Chapter 2

The texting starts when she's back on the road, heading out of Texas.

"The texting starts" is kind of a misnomer, actually. It's more like she starts sending him direct messages on Twitter at random, and _he_ starts texting her, and then she starts texting him back. It's mostly ridiculous stuff, like she'll text him about a song she's heard and he'll text back quoting the one lyric in it that can be misconstrued out of context, or she'll be waiting backstage and send a message about a weird sign, or he'll be dealing with graphic designers and text her a piece of trivia about, like, fonts, or colorblindness, or, like, Scottish food. This one time he texts her about prostitution laws. She's gotten random text messages from people, but his take the cake.

It doesn't actually feel like a _thing_ until he—presumably, anyway—gets drunk and she gets a message that says, _Hope tay doesnt leave you to fend for yourself at night._

It's not that it's inappropriate. It's not that she actually kind of hopes it means what she thinks it means, or that she's too embarrassed to ask. It's just—it's just that half a minute later, there's another text, one that says, _If you ever need any help..._

It's—okay, she knows she's reading too much into it, but she wouldn't think to text something that specific to a random someone, to someone she hasn't thought that about before. 

She replies, _I'm fine, thanks._ She breathes, tries not to, but then she can't help adding, _And Tay and I are not like that, we're just friends_ , because they're not, and she doesn't want him to think they are.

 _Not for his lack of trying_ , he texts back, and she muffles an offended laugh with the back of her hand, and then she feels a little bit bad, because it's okay when John tries to embarrass her, but he hasn't even met Tay, and she can't tell if he's trying to insult him or reprimand _her_ , or even if he's being a normal person for once and just telling her to stop leading Tay on in a single text message. 

_Still not like that_ , she types back, _and plan to let him know soon. Ish._

_Big of you._

She knows she shouldn't, she knows it's childish, but she still texts back, _It's not as if he doesn't already._

_Pretty sure it is._

This time she keeps the _He does_ to herself; she knows that's not the point, and it's late enough that she should be sleeping. 

When she wakes up, there's another three messages from John. Two of them are recent, from the last three hours, and say, _Forget everything I said last night_ , followed by, _Except for the be straight to Taylor L part. That you should keep in mind_. The last one is from last night and says, _Tellim Im sorry. didnt mean to distract you off him_ , which—makes absolutely no sense on first read. She frowns and tries to translate it to human; the closest to a meaningful sentence she comes up is, 'When you break up with him for good, tell him I'm sorry for taking up your attention in the summer, when you were supposed to fall for him.' She can't be sure that's what he actually meant, but deep down she feels like it's the only thing he could be apologizing for.

She wants to send _Screw you_ , a little bit, but instead she settles on, _Your concern for my love life is disturbing._

About six hours later, he replies, _Your love life is disturbing_. Thirty minutes after that, she gets, _The fact that you can call it 'love life' instead of 'sex life' without it making any difference is disturbing._

She takes pity on his hangover and doesn't text him again for the rest of the day.

*

"Can I ask you something?" she says at one point next time she sees him. They're having lunch in Nashville, at a little restaurant owned by a friend of her dad's, and she's starting to feel like he's forcing the conversation to stay nearly strictly professional, and that will not do. Like, okay, she'll never get tired of talking about music, but she can't help the urge to steer things in a different direction when it seems like they want to stay where they are. It's a tragic flaw.

"What do I get in return?"

She rolls her eyes. "Five seconds of conversation," she says blankly, hand over her mouth, swallowing down a fry before she sets her hands on the table and leans back in her chair. "Just curious—what's with all the tattoos?"

"That's your big question?"

She purses her lips, and there's a little pop when she opens her mouth to speak. "Yes," she says. "Well, not big, but it's irrelevant no matter how you cut it, so yeah, if I hadn't said that, it would have been a complete non sequitur, which you would have annoyingly pointed out."

"I didn't know you cared about that."

"Can't you ever just answer?" she asks, laughing. 

There's a long pause, and then he says, deadpan, face betraying nothing, "They're cool."

She raises her eyebrows. "Seriously? Why do you have to mock me?"

"You make it inordinately easy," he says, shrugging, and she glares at him. "But I have good intentions. I have mostly good intentions."

She offers a sweet, childlike smile, and says, "So does the road to Hell." 

That gets her a real, sudden stare; he looks completely flabbergasted, speechless, and she waits a few seconds to break the moment by letting herself giggle.

"I was _kidding_ , oh my _God_ , did you seriously—"

"That was eerie," he interrupts. She can't tell how serious he is, but from the looks of it, she'd say _very_. He's never made a secret of the fact that most religious views disturb him—which is a debate for another day, a day that will probably never happen—but she didn't expect it'd freak him out this much to hear her say that kind of thing. "Never do that again."

She gapes at him for a second. "What, you can make fun of me but I can't make fun of you? Doesn't seem fair to me."

"I don't try to _creep you out_ like—"

"You may not mean it, but you kinda do sometimes anyway," she mumbles.

"—like that, that was terrifying."

She nods, and her voice softens when she says, "Exactly," because it's slightly more personal than the rest of the conversation, admitting that actually, yes, she feels ridiculous around him sometimes, young and stupid and scared.

"Besides," he says, leaning forward over the table and crossing his arms over it, letting the word float in the air for a few seconds before going on, like he wants her full attention, "when you say shit like that, I think religious, and then I think sexually repressed, and then—"

She frowns. "Are you serious?"

"—and then all of that pretty much leads to me picturing you naked. Which I'm guessing is not your intention, so, thought you should know."

"Seriously? Why would you—" She laughs, nervous, and that makes her look away. It's not even on purpose, but once she dodges his eyes once, it's suddenly hard to meet them again. She squeezes the cloth napkin on her lap and attempts to anyway, blinking like, a million times through it. "Really?" she says the second she manages to hold his gaze, and, as soon as the word is out, her eyes shift to her hand as she picks up her glass of water.

"Really." He—it sounds like he's still not entirely serious, but there's a hint of consideration there, of bizarre curiosity. She's tempted to ask—to say, _You see anything you like_ , to play it cool, but all she can do is hook a lock of hair around her finger, pretend she's looking for split ends.

She nods shakily in acknowledgment and changes the subject on the spot.

After that, she finds it so hard to call him she puts it off. If she even thinks about trying, she doesn't. She cringes and stops herself almost unconsciously, stops thinking about it.

It doesn't hurt that there are whole states between them. Out of sight, and all that.

*

Soon enough, it's the cringing that stops, and she starts thinking about calling, again. Starts trying to call.

Except, awkward. Awkward, awkward, awkward, she hums to herself, staring at the phone in her hand, thumb hovering over the call button. Here's the thing nobody tells you about distances: the more you think they're going to help, the less helpful they turn out to be.

Or, okay, they're great if you're avoiding or forgetting someone. But Taylor isn't. She just feels _weird_ —uncertain, mostly, and regretful in this bizarre way where she doesn't know what she has to regret, and frankly kind of self-conscious. Self-conscious about that lunch with John, about their friendship and about him maybe possibly picking up on the stupid crush she's trying really hard to rein in. And distance means a phone call isn't a quick ' _hey, how are you doing, wanna meet up later and talk_ somewhere she can see if he's laughing at her' sort of transitional point. It's a phone call. And there's a million things that can go wrong with phone calls: what if he's busy? What if he's weirded out she called? Taylor has closer friends she only checks in on via sporadic text messages and Twitter while on tour. What if the second she asks if they're okay, the line goes fuzzy, or she hits a tunnel? Then she'd be left with half a phone call and a side of paralyzing doubt for her trouble. She knows herself well enough to predict what her first thought would be if he unexpectedly hung up, and it wouldn't be _well, his battery must have died_.

And then it really would be awkward to call again. So she doesn't risk it.

*

She's shopping for fruit salad ingredients with Selena when she hears, "Oh, I forgot, John Mayer asked about you." It takes Taylor a moment to put message and voice together, mostly because she cannot believe Selena waited until she was holding up a pear in the vegetable aisle of a Whole Foods to tell her this. Only of course she can believe it: like everybody else in the world, Taylor hopes, Selena has no clue Taylor's gone crazy.

"What's with the full name?" she says, because it's the only answer left once she's weeded out all the tellingly pathetic ones.

"We know a lot of Johns," Selena says after a beat. Taylor raises her eyebrows. "I listened to him before I got famous," Selena says quickly, defensively. "I'm allowed to be a little starstruck, okay."

"You've met him before. More than once."

"It hasn't worn off yet, so sue me," Selena says. "Plus it's not like premieres and big damn parties count as _meeting_ people. Besides, you're distracting me from my point. I did have one, and it was as follows: it sounded like he actually cared how you were doing. Because he was, like, trying to sound like he—didn't? It was weird. You have weird friends. You should keep them up to date on your welfare so I don't run the risk of getting caught gaping at them on camera. That is all."

Taylor laughs. "Gaping is a good look on you."

"I know," Selena grins, mock-smug. "Thank you. But I'd like it to stay private." She looks around. "Oh, peaches!"

Selena's great at serious conversation, dedicating as much focus and time as necessary to them without getting sidetracked even by accident, so Taylor concludes she's not as obvious as she thought she was, or maybe she really is getting over it. 

She's pretty sure neither option should make her feel disappointed, but whatever. She can get over that too. Or, apparently, fake it.

*

She _could_ call. Selena told her to. If there's even the slightest hint that it's struck him as out of the blue, she can use that as an excuse. 

If she can. Scripting a conversation isn't an exact science. 

It's not even a success chance issue. You just shouldn't script a conversation. Whatever part of her brain thought of that should be banished from the kingdom of her thought processes instantly. 

No scripting, however, means no safety. It also means there might not be a point to it, since Selena already told John Taylor was doing all right, and she doesn't have any groundbreaking news to report. It would be kind of superfluous, at this point.

She never used to have this much trouble making calls. She blames Joe Jonas. If it ever gets so bad she needs to seek help for it, he's taking care of her therapy bills.

She shoves her phone in the top drawer of her nightstand so the few outstanding seconds of light won't tempt her.

*

The second she spots him across the theater, she abandons all hope of actually finding out what the movie's about.

It's a good one. She thinks she'd like it, if she paid attention. She canceled and uncanceled twice in two weeks because she wasn't sure she could make it but she really wanted to catch the premiere. And it's right there, premiering in front of her eyes. To the side of them, at least. The screen reflects on her friend's vintage silver necklace, and it's like it's making fun of her. It would be the first time a gift she carefully picked out and gave to a friend turned its back on her, but stranger things happen every day. The number thirteen wouldn't have such a bad reputation otherwise. 

John looks bored.

Well, it's not like Taylor can actually see his face. She should quit trying altogether. But bored is the most probable look on it, judging by the fact that there is no way he'd willingly put himself through this dreck while neither sick nor high nor in the company of someone to mock it to. She feels validated when he leans in to whisper something to the people sitting next to him and exits the room less than fifteen minutes in. She wonders for a moment if he came here for her, like in movies when someone throws a "casual" party just to invite their love interest, and intently disabuses herself of that notion. Because she canceled and uncanceled twice in two weeks, and also she's not delusional. When in doubt as to why John's doing anything—when the obvious answer isn't because he wants to—the likeliest explanation is almost without exception _because his publicist made him_.

As soon as he's out of sight, she excuses herself and walks up to the door in the back. She feels overly tall and guilty and obvious, so she walks slowly, making sure the clacking of her heels won't disturb anyone.

It's crazy how fast the dread she'd been feeling for weeks turns to anticipation once she spots him. He's walking into a deserted hallway, one that leads to a fire escape, she thinks, toward the back of the building.

"Please tell me you've taken up smoking since the last time I saw you," he pleads by way of hello.

"No such luck," Taylor says, shrugging not really apologetically at all. He stuffs the unlit cigarette he was holding into his pocket. She counts this as a win, even though she wasn't asking for nor expecting it.

She has no idea what to add to that, and he doesn't seem much more inspired. He's looking at her, not really intently but—apprehensively, questioning. Neither of them says a word until, somewhere on the other side of the wall they're standing next to, a door squeaks open and cracks shut.

"I thought you were avoiding me," he says, unaffected, like he wants her to think it's okay if she was, that he would understand that.

"I think I kind of was," she admits. He laughs, and she smiles sheepishly. That seems to break the ice a little bit.

Or a lot, because she hasn't even finished saying, "I was going to call, but then I kept thinking it might be weird and how it would be weirder to call than to not call," when he blurts out, "I was really out of line."

"You weren't out of—"

"I was, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable—"

"You didn't," she says. At the incredulous tilt of his head, she wraps her fingers lightly around his elbow and reiterates, "You didn't make me uncomfortable," and somehow things get awkward again.

Her glance drifts to her hand, first, which has dropped to his wrist, and she takes a step forward, adapting to the natural angle of her arm. When she looks up, time seems to slow down.

It's not—dramatic, or anything. It's just she notices these tiny, infinitesimal fractions of movement as though they're big neon signs, red blinking warnings: his teeth dragging over his bottom lip, and his tongue peeking out, wetting it and retreating so he can open his mouth, doubtlessly to say something like _we should go back_ or some anecdote to make her laugh and chase away the tension, and it's not right. It's avoidance. It's not right.

She knows it's a case of instinctive, preemptive damage control, a desire to stay in this moment compelling her to do something, but she's still surprised when that something turns out to be crushing their mouths together.

It hurts, actually, more than a little bit. Then she does it again, slower, more carefully, and it doesn't at all, apart from the initial clash of teeth fizzling off, reverberating along her jaw. It's just a press of lips on lips, now, lasting not longer than a lingering blink before she moves back. 

He leans forward then, barely, keeping their mouths together for just this extra second, and it's really nothing, nothing at all, but it feels massively significant, like a supernova of information and relief beaming every knot in her stomach untied.

She feels the corners of her mouth turn up. She hasn't a clue when it happened or how she missed it, but her hand is holding onto the side of his shoulder now, not his wrist, and there's a light weight on her hip, a large palm tentatively resting there. As she opens her eyes, she says, "Hey."

"Hey," he echoes, softly. "We should—"

"—go back to the movie. Yeah."

They're still close, not making any attempts to tear themselves apart, and Taylor takes the chance to kiss him again. She goes for the side of his mouth, half hoping he'll turn to kiss her full on the lips again, but he doesn't move. Her next kiss falls on his cheek, and then she pulls away.

"Did you take something?" he asks, tone halfway between amused and worried and perplexed. She frowns. "You didn't get anything slipped into your drink or anything, did you?"

"No," she says, voice breaking high all of a sudden. She looks down, picking at his sleeve, and adds, "Just feeling friendly," which she's pretty sure is the least helpful thing she could have said. If somebody told her that in a situation like this, she'd feel justified to kill them.

"Friendly," he repeats, brows rising.

She lets go of his arm and says firmly, "Friendly."

"Okay." He's still touching her, and his hand relocates to the small of her back for the couple of empty hallways they have to walk through to return to the projection room.

That hand is not friendly: it doesn't make assumptions like you would with a friend, it doesn't push, it doesn't run. It holds back. It's not confident, Taylor thinks, but it confides.

That hand is the sole reason Taylor doesn't take back her words.

*

Less than a week later, Taylor gets a text that says: _You seen it again yet? I just saw the poster on a bus. Got a shiver up my spine. Safe to say the scars go deep._

She's fairly sure she knows what he's talking about, but she texts back, _Seen what?_ anyway. She has her reasons. She's hoping for—

 _That atrocious movie we sat through last week._ Acknowledgment. Acknowledgment that they were at the very least in the same place at the same time. She was maybe worried he'd deny he'd seen her at all just to get as far away from the fact that they kissed as possible.

She considers saying she couldn't see it again because she didn't exactly absorb anything the first time, but that's a little too close to a conversation about _why_ that he'd probably shut down. And it's not like she's expecting him to acknowledge that why, and if she's honest she's not entirely sure how she'd go about that herself, but she really doesn't want to give him a chance to pretend nothing happened. She doesn't want to have to fight to address it once she figures out how. 

So she plays it safe and sends back the simplest answer she can: _Yes_.

*

"I just very nearly took a deer's life," John opens with next time he calls. 

Taylor's so torn between rolling her eyes and freaking out, no feelings at all show through in her answer. "What happened?"

"It was frolicking on a highway, as deer do," John says matter-of-factly. "I was driving down a highway. They happened to be the same highway. Nothing new under the sun."

"Is it okay? Are you okay?"

"Unscathed, both of us. Me I know for obvious reasons, and I'm judging its physical fitness by the speed at which it ran off before we could collide."

Taylor's not unaccustomed to John's conversation openers—honestly, it would be a lot more alarming to pick up the phone and hear him say hello—but there's usually a point to them, and he doesn't seem to be getting to it. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I'm bored and or it reminded me of you, take your pick," says John.

Taylor makes an indignant noise. It comes out as a squeak, but she holds onto her composure as she says, "I have yet to run away from you. In case you hadn't noticed." She hopes it's the right choice of explanation. She hopes she's not projecting and embarrassing herself by taking that risk.

"All in due time," he says. If she was wrong, he doesn't suggest it.

She grins. "Is that a threat?"

"I wouldn't call it that." He hums for a second. "A prediction, maybe."

"A prediction?" she says, followed by a brief burst of laughter. She sobers up quickly and adds, "Want to bet?"

There's a moment of silence. That really might have been pushing it, too obvious, too far. Before she can change the course of the conversation, though, he says, "I think saying yes to that now might constitute coercion later on."

"Later on?" Taylor echoes, eyes wide. She can't believe they're having this conversation. She can't believe they're having this conversation like they're not actually having it, like it's this completely inconsequential bit of small talk. At any rate, she ventures, "When I want to run off but I want to win the bet more?"

"Precisely."

"I'm not really that kind of person," she says, hoping her voice conveys her smirk. "And stop flattering yourself. You're really not as scary as you think you are."

She hears a laugh, dry and resigned, and then he says in a conclusive tone, "Just trying to be fair," so she drops back in her armchair and relaxes. She hadn't even realized she was tense—or taken note of the fact that she had at some point sat up and leaned forward, elbows on her thighs.

"I hope it was a pretty deer," Taylor says, going back to the crossroads and choosing the shallow road this time.

"It was adorable," John says, deadpan. "In all likelihood also mentally challenged, but adorable all the same."

*

Taylor really should be used to pre-show setbacks. Keyword being 'should.'

It's not even a big thing—there's some issue with the rising platform that's supposed to be fixable so quickly it won't even delay her show, which is scheduled to begin in forty minutes. The fact that she hasn't been told exactly what's wrong is worrisome, though, because best-case scenario says they haven't found what's wrong yet, and worst-case scenario is actually probably the same thing. It's hard to tell if hearing a specific account of what's going on would freak her out more or less than the vague, optimistic statements she generally gets when stuff like this happens.

She really should be used to it.

Her band at least is, and as soon as Amos finds her, he sets his hands firmly on her shoulders, warm and soothing, and says, "It's fine. They found the problem, it's being fixed, it will not affect your show," and waits for her to show she's understood. Taylor nods. "You need anything, you know how to get someone to get it for you. Do you have your phone?"

She does, obviously. She's just having a little trouble remembering where it is. She can't recall seeing it in her dressing room, but she had it in the car, so—she probably left it in her coat.

"Never mind, take mine," he says, and hands his cellphone to her. Which is a good course of action, seeing as she doesn't remember where she left her coat, either. "Call someone. Call your dad or your brother—I'll tell your mom to get her ass over here if you need. Call anyone whose number you have at the ready. Get your head out of here for four minutes."

She takes a deep breath. He's right: there's no use in panicking. Easier than put into practice, but completely true anyway. "Okay," she says when she finds her voice. "Yeah. I'll—" She gestures vaguely backwards with the phone in her hand. "Thanks."

Her dressing room at this venue is one of the nicest she's seen in a while. It's smaller than most, and doesn't contain anything out of the ordinary, but the furniture all looks like it was stolen out of a period movie, old-looking but clearly new, and the white bedding on the sofabed is seriously gorgeous.

It makes her smile, and she feels increasingly better as she locks the door and sits down on the couch.

The phone's still in her hand, a light but noticeable weight, and she eyes it warily. She considers calling her dad, but she always misses her dad more when she talks to him, like his presence reminds Taylor she's soon going to have to do without it again, and that's when dread sets in her stomach, this weird kind of dread that's one part fear, one part anticipation, one part actual yearning. Besides, what's she going to say? 'Hey, dad, there's an issue with the stage platform and nobody's telling me anything that'll let me know what exactly that issue is and it's making me anxious, tell me how your gardening is going?' Not that that would be something she's never done before or even irregular in the slightest, but her dad always sounds so _confused_ , like, don't-understand-why-you're-so-upset-about-this perplexed. It doesn't hurt his ability to listen and help, but it does make Taylor feel silly and childish while simultaneously still worried about the setback du jour.

She really, really should be used to this, she thinks, just as she looks around and notices the scrap of paper that's sticking out of the open make-up case on the coffee table. She remembers this—remembers the conversation after the show he joined her at, remembers John scribbling down these numbers and saying that was the phone he actually paid attention to and that she looked like she wouldn't abuse that knowledge. 

Before thinking it through, she's holding the scrap of paper and dialing the number scrawled on it, wondering if you get used to this stuff with time or if it all depends on how it fits into the rest of your neuroses.

She knows for a fact John has a fair amount of those.

As soon as he picks up, she says, "Have you ever had a wardrobe malfunction during a show?" It seems like a good place to start. "And it's Taylor, by the way. But the question stands."

There's a long pause, a nice kind of waiting limbo, and then he says, "Okay, now I'm really picturing you naked," words sprinkled with a touch of laughter, like that's now a perfectly normal thing to say, an inside joke. 

Which, it is, she guesses. It's not like she's bothered by it. But. But.

If they were in that zone, that there-could-be-something-more gray area Taylor thought and hoped they were in, wouldn't he measure his words? If he had any intention of acknowledging that, he wouldn't be so direct, he wouldn't reference the comment that propelled half the trouble they've gotten into in the first place. She knows he hasn't said anything yet, and he hasn't been avoiding her, exactly, so he's had his chance. But he hasn't said anything to make her think the possibility wasn't still there, either. 

This, though? This feels like a snub. A subtle but perfectly clear snub.

She wishes she didn't feel the need to read so much into _everything_. It's so obsessive and pointless, and it never ends well. She forces a smile. "Pervert."

There's a complicit chuckle down the line, and then he says, "So public opinion tells me, but enough about me. What clothing item went astray? Give me something good."

"Not clothing," Taylor says in a conspiratorial tone, just because the not comes out in it and she sees no reason not to be a little silly. It's the equally conspiratorial breath she takes before going on that alerts her to how deeply and quickly she's calmed down—record time. Whatever he's doing—making flirting sound like friendliness, pretending it is friendliness, whatever it is he's doing—is totally working. "Something's wrong with the lifting platform," she says before she can feel self-conscious again. "It's nothing. Supposedly. Nobody's confirmed anything yet."

"You want them to?" he says, and Taylor can picture an incredulous expression on his face, an implication that nobody in their right mind would like to be kept up to date on something they can't actually help with.

"Not really," she realizes, "but it's still driving me crazy."

"Believe me, it's worse when someone lists off what's wrong with something and expects you to magically come up with a handy solution."

"Really?"

"So I would imagine," he says, calmly. "Don't you have a whole crew of people running around there? That Amos guy from your band, isn't he around?"

"He's... busy," Taylor says. "I think he's dealing with one of the techs."

"Which is not actually his job, is it? So why don't you help him help you?"

"What do you—"

"Let's see, that guy," he says. "I've seen that guy around you, and he'd bend over backwards for you," which is all true, and then, "and I hear sucking face is good stress relief. Maybe you should try it."

"With _Amos_?" she says, cheeks heating up. "That's not—that's not in his job description either."

"So it wouldn't be an abuse of power," he says, purposely misreading her point. "I fail to see how that's a bad thing."

She inhales so deeply to even out her voice she chokes on thin air instead, coughing lightly before saying, "He's old."

She doesn't have time to think better of it before the words leave his mouth, which is—stupid, so stupid, because she should have, except then she would have remained quiet, and sometimes awkward silence is worse than awkward phrasing. He's definitely no stranger to the latter, so she's not embarrassed about _that_. She's just so freaking confused; she can't remember the last time she didn't even know what she was trying to do about something. All she knows is she _wants_ , wants John, wants there to be something more than this between them so badly, and a part of her wants to do something about it, jump in head first, like whatever happens happens and at least she tried. 

But then there's that little rational voice in her head, the part of her that _knows_ what a bad idea it would be and thinks she's still in time to stop it while it's still an option, before it becomes unmanageable and then the only options are pining or risking rejection or worse, getting involved in a potentially unhealthy relationship with a guy she's been warned against before it even crossed her mind to—whatever it is that's crossed her mind. 

"Of course," he says, tone light. "What a travesty of a suggestion. Clearly you wouldn't date an old man like him."

"That's not what I meant," she says, trying for casual, annoyed, and sounding vaguely desperate instead when she latches onto the realization that, "He's also happily married."

"You're going to have to tell me what that means."

"What 'married' means?" Taylor asks, and after a second of silence goes on, "It means he's unavailable, John. Not that hard a concept to grasp."

"But you informed me of that with no conjunctions. Is it 'I would screw him despite his age, except he's married so I can't,' or is it 'I wouldn't screw him because he's an _old man_ , _and_ even if he wasn't there's the additional dealbreaker of his marriage'? It may seem confusing, but it's an important distinction." 

He's talking about her. And him. He has got to be talking about them. That kiss happened, even if he's tried, retrospectively, to make it mean nothing. Nobody in their right mind would just casually strike up a conversation about age differences with the teenage girl they're pretending not to have kissed. There's being a good liar and there's lying about lying and then there's being stupid. This would be a display of idiocy unless she's supposed to hear something that he's not saying in actual words, unless he's asking her, in his convoluted, twisted way, if she'd date someone his age—if she'd date _him_.

There are so many answers to that, and she has no idea which one she should go with. Which ones she can get away with. This has nothing to do with anyone not directly on each side of the phone—of Amos's phone—and maybe this is her one chance to say she wouldn't go looking for it, but she maybe would overlook an age gap if it happened to be on her way to something—someone—she really wants. 

But maybe he's really being hypothetical, and she feels so tongue-tied she ends up saying, stat, "Maybe just not him." 

And then there's a knock on her door.

"You have to go," he says. He sounds amused—she hopes it's a vague, the-world-conspires-against-us sort of amusement at the timing of that interruption. The only other option is he's laughing at her, and she doesn't even want to consider that as a possibility, so. Cosmic timing joke it is.

"Yeah." It's not like she _wants_ to—she's sure a few more minutes on the phone would help her shake off some of this awkwardness—but she normally would, and she doesn't want to—

She doesn't want to raise suspicions.

Wow.

"I'd tell you to break a leg," he begins. She can imagine him pressing his lips together to hold back a smile, and that glint in his eye he gets when he's about to say something he shouldn't, like, "but it would be a tragedy if the world were to lose either of yours."

She's not a stranger at this point to his weird flirty overtures, so what strikes her the most about those words is how his voice sounds, so much lower and meeker than if he were simply trying to embarrass her. But she can't let that get to her.

As she shuts off the phone, she uses her other hand to tug at the hem of her dress, try to stretch it over more skin than it's meant to cover. She pats her knee nervously when she realizes what she's doing. 

"Tay!" she hears from the other side of the door—it sounds like an umpteenth repetition, and she barely holds back an apology for zoning out. In retrospect, she could just say she was sorry; she could say she was talking to her dad or doing breathing exercises or something. 

What she actually does is the silliest thing ever: she yanks the bathroom door shut with a purposefully loud smack, and yells, "Yeah?" as though she _just_ heard, and tries to look like she just dashed across the room when she opens the door. 

Maybe it's the nervous effort, but she does feel a little breathless by the time she lays eyes on Liz's face.

"Something about a phone," Liz says, vaguely gesturing behind herself, and Taylor spots Amos with his fingers making a gun and using it as a telephone, then pointing it at her. Taylor makes a vague gesture of acknowledgment as Liz looks her up and down and says, "Wow, you look like you had a gallon of coffee." She pumps her small fist in the air and adds, "Get 'em, gurl!"

But the thing is, she hasn't had anything but water and hot tea and juice all day long, and the idea that she _looks_ shaken—it worries her and at the same time makes her realize it _was_ a good idea not to say a word, to put on a show to explain her silence.

She deletes any record of the call before handing the cell over to Amos. It's okay. She can do this. It's not really like anything she's ever hidden before, but she can try, for now, to give herself the privacy she needs to get what she wants.

If it doesn't work, well, then she'll just take international espionage off her potential back-up careers list. 

*

Talking on the phone becomes uncomfortable again after that; every word feels like she's shuffling her feet, like he's dodging the point. Talking on the phone becomes kind of something she doesn't do much, and it's awful, and she only manages to let it last until a few days before his album comes out. 

Taylor doesn't even process where she's going until the third time her cab stops at a red light. She fumbles half-blindly in her bag until she finds her phone, tapping absently on the seat as she unblocks the screen. She thumbs her way around it and sticks the phone in her pocket a few times before she does anything with it. She wants to tell someone about this, maybe. She wants to tell someone that she's currently stuck in traffic because she randomly decided to go on a spontaneous cross-state trip just to see someone for thirty minutes, tops, and clear up an issue that, from a responsible perspective, would do better to stay unaddressed. Forever. She wants to tell someone about that, and how she's anxious but mostly high on life, so psyched to see this person again, but—well, she can't. There's nobody on her contact list she can imagine telling that to who wouldn't ask three million questions in return and completely ruin her mood. If she wanted her mood ruined, she'd just check her replies on Twitter.

When the cab begins moving again, she puts her phone back in the bag. It's been forever since the last time she saw John, weeks since the last time they actually _talked_ , and she's nervous for a million reasons, all perfectly natural, and there's not a single muscle in her body that wants to turn back, let go of her resolve. 

She clutches the straps of her bag, and stays put.


	3. Chapter 3

John silently thanks himself for turning in early when he gets home to find Taylor sitting on his doorstep. She looks up when he takes a loud enough step into the hallway leading up to his door. Her expression is the motionless equivalent of a shrug, and her eyes are a little glazed, like she's been contemplating falling asleep. She's got an earphone on, and her laptop is sleeping in her bag, rest light gazing out of a corner.

It's the middle of the fucking night in the middle of fucking November in _New York_ and Taylor is waiting on his doorstep. Then again, maybe it's better he showed up out of the blue here instead of in California; at least the doorstep to his apartment has a roof overhead here, though it's still pretty fucked up she risked the possibility of having to wait outside in the cold all night for absolutely no reason that he can discern.

"Surprise," she says when he fails to greet her, and he cocks his head.

"You should have called," he says, and reaches over her to unlock the door. He only lets her in first because he's fairly sure her ass must be dying, but she really, really should have called. 

Taylor takes the hint and piles her things into her arms before standing to her full height and stepping into his apartment. "I know," she says, mostly to her collar, and he shuts the door behind himself.

Taylor's already left her stuff in the couch when he thinks of asking, "Who let you in?"

"One of your... neighbors? A tall, black-haired mom with really impressive—" She sets her hands a few inches away from her chest, like she's cupping a pair of tits about three cups bigger than hers, and then she drops her hands and shrugs. "—clothes. Really impressively tidy clothes. Very professional outfit for someone coming in at two in the morning in the company of a small child."

He stops on his tracks for a moment, jacket in hand and everything. "Christine let you in," he says, barely stressing the words into a question. All he knows about Christine is how quick she is to yell at the postman and the doorman and various other handymen. 

"Yeah." Taylor frowns like it's weird he's questioning the truthfulness of what she's saying. "Her son recognized me."

He nods, crosses the living room area and tosses his jacket into an armchair. "You should have started with that."

"Where's the fun in that?" she says, holding back a smile and walking over to him. 

That's when he realizes, among other things, that, if he takes a single step back, he'll fall over the couch. And she's really close, and she smells like some kind of fruity red conditioner, and this is not a good situation for him to be in. He stands there, trying to be casual about putting his hands on the back of the couch and leaning back against it. It's not like he can circle her. That would be rude. 

"Nice hat," he points out, and that seems to distract her; she drags it down over her face, nose scrunching up over the knit and hair sticking up like a wicker basket. It's messy and he wants to muss it up even more. He settles for stealing the hat and shoving it down his pocket.

"Sweet show," she shoots back, shadow of a smirk on her lips. "Or so I imagine it must have been, to keep me waiting."

"It's not keeping someone waiting if you think they're off being busy on their own," John says. "You should've—"

"—called, I know, I thought so too," she supplies, excitedly agreeing in that way where it's obvious she doesn't believe a word she's saying. "But then I thought, you might not pick up! Again. Or you might blow me off, or say you're too busy, or say I'm too busy, and we're going to keep skirting around each other, and I'm going out of my mind."

"Did your band kick you out?" he asks, completely serious. It's either that or laughing. "This is a hard lesson to learn, but it's just not polite to strum your instrument when people are trying to sleep," he goes on, because he hasn't dug a deep enough hole for himself already, and that's when she stands on her toes, yard-long heels and all, and leans in to kiss him. 

When he touches his hands to her neck, all he means to do is pull her off him. He means to break apart and keep her away by physical force if necessary, that's it, only then her neck is beneath his hands, and her hair is tangling on his wrist, on his watch, so he can't just yank his hand away now. The kiss is close-mouthed at this point, chaste but for the way her entire body seems to be asking for a lot more than chaste, close-mouthed kisses.

He runs his tongue along her bottom lip until she opens up for him, and he's surprised by how good she is at this, how shamelessly she takes control of the kiss despite the one hand she has on his body, on his hip, being so tentative he can't even feel it, despite everything. He has really no problem at all going with it, letting her pace things, so he keeps a hand on her neck and moves the other one to her waist, not squeezing or anything, but firm enough to send a hint about how she should—shouldn't—hold on to him.

She gasps and pulls away for all of a microsecond and about .0003 inches, and then she bites his lip and presses her whole body into his, arching her back and leaving her neck exposed. It's not much of a stretch to trace a trail from her lips to her pulse point, licking and sucking along the underside of her jaw until he finds a spot that makes her moan, long and loud and terrifying and, worst of all, mouthwatering. He sucks on it again before resurfacing, and he's quick enough to drink in that second noise, and the whimper that follows when he holds her waist with both hands and pulls her close.

She kisses back right for some time before closing up, going back to tentative lip contact, and then there's a clacking of heels as she disentangles herself from him. He lets go of her when she blinks at him, crossing his arms in a way he hopes doesn't look too much like he's forcibly keeping his hands to himself, and watches her lick her lips and thumb messed-up lipstick off the corner of her mouth. Her hands find each other when she stretches down her arms.

"So, that—"

"Didn't happen?" he offers pointedly. Her face falls. In a way, it would be good if she backed off now. He doesn't know why he's offended by the possibility. "Unless—" he amends. It's maybe the stupidest word he's ever said without knowing how to follow up. Unless what?

"No," she says, taking a few steps around him to sit on the back of the couch. He has no idea what she means by that, but he turns to face her anyway. "No, it's—it did," she mumbles, mostly to herself, and then she looks up, straight at him. "It did," she says, more firmly, like it's him who needs convincing. 

The weird thing about Taylor isn't that she's— _something_ enough to show up unannounced at his apartment when he could easily be out for the entire night. It isn't that she's regrettably idealistic for someone in their business, or even that despite that she deliberately chooses to spend time with him. It's not even that she says completely ridiculous shit on a regular basis and means it, or that he's so used to that he has no trouble buying it—as honest remarks, at least, even if he doesn't share them.

The weird thing about Taylor, the thing he didn't expect, is that when she pulls crap like this, she's not sure it's going to work. She's never sure. Sometimes she looks like she doesn't even know if she wants it. But she does it anyway, she risks it and she pushes things even John's not jaded enough to want to see go to hell like they're going to work out. 

The weird thing about Taylor is that he may not believe or value her reasons the way she does, but he finds it impossible to patronize her or look down on her or even disagree on them. 

Truth is, he likes that she's like that. He likes her like that, he doesn't necessarily want to change that she's like that, and that's the problem: he may want her, and for some godforsaken reason she may want him back, but that's not it. That's not the entirety of it. He doesn't just want to fuck her into oblivion, and she's too young to deal with his shit. 

He basically cares about her enough that it almost feels like he has some semblance of morals when it comes to whatever it is they're doing, whatever she wants them to do.

"All right," he says, because he doesn't really have anything else, and she nods fractionally in acknowledgment. "Do you have a—"

"Flight to catch, yes," she says, perking up. "In about seven hours, but I can totally call a cab and—find a hotel."

"You can crash here," he says blankly; she's obviously waiting for it, which makes it utterly unnecessary, but it would be a lot more awkward to just let her go. "I have two spare bedrooms and a perfectly good couch."

"You have two spare bedrooms and a perfectly good couch," she echoes, tilting her chin—incredulously? Defiantly? It's not exactly a positive expression, and there isn't even a hint of amusement in it. He has no idea what she heard; there was nothing to warrant that look in what he said. 

"I'm not going to sleep with you," he says, because it needs to be said, and she frowns at him. "That came out wrong."

She nods slowly. "Okay," she says.

"You don't have to stay here if you don't want to." That doesn't come out right, either, but there was really no way for it not to come out wrong. It's the wrong thing to say; it's more defensive than it is true. She's got to know that.

"Okay," she repeats, and turns to grab the things in the couch. 

She's gone before he's had a chance to phrase something right.

*

It's horrible timing for a ridiculous fight; his album's coming out the next day, and he really honestly cannot get a minute to call her, because it's Taylor, and you can't wrap up a conversation with Taylor in a minute, especially when she wants you to apologize for something you shouldn't have to apologize for. Calling and hanging up on her before he figures out what the hell she wants would just make things worse.

It hasn't even been two full days after she left when he gets a text from her that says, I see you really care, and it's the sheer frustration of seeing someone be this stupid that drives him to call Taylor even though he has to leave in thirty minutes for a private show. 

"Wow, you deigned to call," Taylor opens, coldly, and he rolls his eyes even though she can't see him. Possibly because she can't see him, but that's not important.

"Why are you—" he starts, but then he realizes he doesn't want the answer for that, so he rephrases to: "What are you doing?"

"I'm hanging out with Abigail," she says pointedly, clearly reading his question wrong on purpose, "who, guess what, has never felt the need to say _I'm not going to sleep with you_ to get the point across that she's not attracted to me."

"That isn't a fair comparison," he points out.

"This isn't a fair battle," she says. He can picture her shrugging, defiant, and it makes him want to laugh; if her stubbornness wasn't directed at him, if he didn't know she'd take it to heart, interpret it as him laughing at her instead of just laughing because it's fucking adorable when she gets all self-righteous like this, he would. 

"It's not a fucking battle either," he says instead. "And I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to, I'm going to because it's driving me nuts that you can get an idea that wrong and hold it for this long: you are so fucking off-base, you have no idea."

"Okay, then. Enlighten me," she says, a bite to her words that he's never heard before. She sounded childish before; now she sounds—she just sounds tired and angry. There's no petulance in it. There are so many ways she could have said those last two words and make him feel like he was doing the right thing by letting the space between them stand and stretch. She probably should have.

He rubs his forehead with his hand and takes a deep breath. "Can't we settle this in some way that doesn't make your mom want to put a hit out on me?"

"My mom trusts me." A pause. "My mom doesn't know she should blacklist you yet," she gives. She sounds less emotional than before, more matter of fact than anything else. Maybe they can actually talk now. "Should I tell her?"

"It's your mom," says John, "shouldn't you know?"

"I don't know, should I, who do you think booked my flight to New York," says Taylor, leaving no room for an answer. "I want to tell Selena."

"—okay?" he tries. He's never said anything about not telling anyone. The press is a given, obviously, but other than that she has carte blanche to tell whoever she wants whatever she wants. There isn't even much to tell. 

"I want there to be something to tell Selena," she clarifies. 

"Something," he echoes.

"Yes, something," she says, and breathes out a laugh. It seems like she's calmed down. "Okay, look, with Abigail? I can just tell her everything, but with Selena, I need to know there is something, and I need to know it soon because she's been acting suspicious and she's going to look at me _so_ condescendingly if she asks what is going on and all I have to say is _I don't know_."

"That was so fucking weird, what you just said. And I fail to see what's wrong with not knowing. You can't know straight away. These things don't just _come to be_ out of thin air."

"No," she interrupts. "I'm not—" She laughs. "I'm not asking for a label, I just need us to stop acting like there's a chance on earth we're going to not do this because it's a bad idea. You know there isn't."

He switches hands on his phone and considers it. "That's it?"

"Yeah," she says. It's meant to be dismissive, but there's something rigid beneath her tone that doesn't come across as casual as she's going for. She's still going for that, though, which is good enough. 

"Come by sometime," he says. "Try calling first. We'll—talk."

"Talk," she repeats, drawing out the word so that it sounds like it needs two full syllables to contain her disbelief. He expected that. 

"We've talked before," he points out. "In fact, before you got it into your head that you had to screw me, that was all we did. We talked and we wrote."

He doesn't expect her breathing to soften after that, though, and he definitely doesn't expect her to laugh, brief and amused, before saying, "You're putting me on a trial run. We don't need to try talking. Or writing. You don't have to _shelter_ me—"

"I am resolutely not trying to shield you from anything," he interrupts, just as the bell rings, "for the record."

"Okay," she says, quiet, and she hums a little, a tinny nasal sound that rises and falls in volume a few times, like she's debating whether to put the phone down or not, and then he's listening to a dial tone.

He stuffs his phone in his back pocket and goes off to open the door.

*

They don't end up writing, but after an awkward lunch and half a really bad movie, she picks up an acoustic and asks him to listen to this song she's been working on. 

"Ready?" she says, cross-legged on the floor, back to an armchair, and he sits up against the armrest of the couch before nodding.

She sounds nice, on pitch, that kind of simple, seemingly easy singing that actually takes much more effort to get right and even than it sometimes looks like, and the melody's unsurprising from her—mellow country-pop with a marginally more mature feel than Breathe, her voice unsteady and more grown-up than in any other writing session he's had with her. She slides down the end of the bridge at a livelier pace than it seems to call for, though, and it strikes him that she might have rushed through it by accident, because the little noise that escapes her throat when she breathes in before launching into the chorus definitely doesn't belong in a Taylor Swift™ song. 

She blinks at him, eyes fluttering and lingering closed for a second, and then she looks down at her hand on the guitar, abashed.

Two lines later, he realizes that the lyrics sound a hell of a lot like they're about him. About revisiting the truths she's always known to come to terms with wanting him. The song sounds mellow and mature and unlike her because she's singing about the possibility of sex.

He's hardly the kind of person who keeps his mouth shut when he should, but he has no idea what to say to this. He could tell her it's an awful song she needs to scrap before she tries to sneak it into a live show or a soundtrack or, worse, her next album, but it's not that obvious, the whole second-person analogy she's got going is vaguely corny but for once it has nothing to do with Hans Christian Andersen or even Shakespeare, and he could just be flattering himself it's about him. For all the important stuff he knows about her, it could be about Joe Jonas. 

"So," Taylor says after the last note fades out, tapping her fingers around the edge of her guitar, low and arrhythmic, "what do you think?"

He could just ask. He could say, 'Was that about me?' And she might say, 'No,' and laugh at him, and after breathing in relief he might be able to give her a useful opinion. Of course, she might also say, 'Yes,' and that would put him in a position where he'd have to openly reject her, or openly make the worst fucking mistake he's made in two entire years.

"It's good," he says perfunctorily. "The bridge is too fast, you should slow it down, and some of the lyrics could use some tweaking, but you've definitely got something there."

Taylor smiles, but it's not a full smile; he doesn't know if that's what she's going for, but it definitely comes off as suggestive. She prompts, "Some of the lyrics such as..."

"Well, there's—" he tries, except everything he can think of makes him feel like he's saying something unintentionally personal that she shouldn't take as fact, and then he gets distracted by the way she's nodding expectantly and licking her lips. She's probably doing it on purpose. One shouldn't underestimate the magnitude of repressed—or maybe not; Taylor doesn't strike him as having a lot of sexual experience, but at this point he wouldn't be surprised if she had some—filthiness contained within someone who may or may not have worn a purity ring at some point in her life.

She's looking at his mouth. She's looking at his mouth as she sets her guitar aside, and she's still looking—staring—at his mouth when she stands and walks over. She sits on the edge of the coffee table closest to him, leaning in like his brain will suddenly regain its basic functions if he can smell her and feel her body heat like a trap. Or handcuffs. Don't think about handcuffs now, she's not even fucking twenty years old, she's only nineteen and his blood is all going south and her knee's poking his thigh and she's so close he could kiss her. 

Correction: he's so close he's kissing her.

What he should do now is pull back and ask her to please remove her tongue from his mouth and her body from his personal space so this kind of accident doesn't happen again. Pulling back at all would be a worthy goal. 

Kissing her harder when she settles with her knees at each side of his thigh is not even remotely near being a priority, which is probably why it happens. He's never dealt well with pressure.

"This is a really bad idea," he finally manages, stealing another kiss from her after he's done talking because her mouth is right there and fuck, she's straddling him. It's hard enough to keep his hands over her hips and not grab her thighs and push her closer.

Her fingers wrap tighter around the back of his neck as she follows his lips, breathes out against them, "You like bad ideas. You're good at bad ideas," and tugs at his lower lip with her teeth before licking in.

"I'm reforming," he says, and it sounds so incoherently muffled he almost says it again when Taylor puts enough space between their mouths to breathe cool air.

"No," she hums, shaking her head lightly, "you're not doing any of that, you're kissing me, come on," undoing the top button of her shirt, then another, "come on," and another, down to her belly, and she reaches down to grasp his wrist and drag his hand under her shirt, over her breast. The expression on her face flickers from bold to curious to lustful, and he has no idea which one he's trying to erase from his retinae when he starts kissing her in earnest, but they all vanish as soon as he dives in.

He presses his palm against her chest, over her bra. His knuckles stumble across her nipple almost by accident, a stiff outdent on the fabric, and he rolls the heel of his hand against it until she whines into his mouth, arches into the touch.

"You can't do this to me," he says, except she can, and she is, and this is all him any fucking way, and he doesn't have it in him to stop. He has it in him to take her clothes off and bend her over the nearest flat surface and fuck the living daylights out of her.

From the way she has no problem with his thigh grazing her crotch and doesn't back off when her knee angles up between his legs and she feels him—he shouldn't even be getting hard, this is just wrong—he's pretty sure she would let him. 

Then again, he's also sure he'll be fucked, in the rhetorical sense, if he lets himself go down that road, so he's doing his best to keep their hands over each other's waist until he gathers the presence of mind to push her off.

His hand on her other breast is going for that exactly—it is honestly its only goal—and slipping it under her bra and circling her nipple with his thumb is supposed to scare her, not make her moan louder, let alone prompt her to grip the hem of his shirt and drag him up as she stands up. 

"You need to leave," he says, and the words lose impact about as fast as Taylor discards her shirt. Which is just fucked up, because it caused him pain to say them, and that should be worth something. She should have said, 'You're right, your public image is bad enough without adding fucking Taylor Swift to the list of offenses,' and put a stop to all of this. 

Or he should have some semblance of willpower and composure at this point in his life, and not let himself be manhandled by a nineteen-year-old girl. 

Neither approach is working, unless sticking his hands down the back pockets of Taylor's jeans and walking Taylor backwards into his bedroom counts as a sensible decision. 

It's got to be better than pushing her around, at least. He's given her a bunch of chances to run away from this, and she should know better than to expect him to act levelheaded when she's dangling her tits in front of him and what the hell, when did she lose her bra?

In the span of time it takes him to divert his eyes from her bare chest, she manages to undo her jeans and lie back on his bed, so that by the time he takes in the image of her—half-naked, hair slightly tousled, sprawling luxuriously in his bed—he feels even filthier than he would if he'd just stared at her pretty pink nipples a lot longer.

Her hands are about to push her jeans down when he notices the way her eyes are moving, searching his, like she's suddenly feeling self-conscious about all of this, and fuck, that's not how she should feel. She should feel sexy. She should feel like a walking wet dream—

"This is okay, right?" she asks, blinking slowly and curling a lock of hair around her pinky, and he nods and kneels on the bed, over her.

"More than I can handle," he says, voice rough and unsteady, and kisses her before she can even consider feeling anything less than breathtakingly hot. 

She responds furiously, wrapping one leg around the back of his knees and surging up, grasping at his hair and pushing his shirt up like it'll come off by magic despite the way she's doing her goddamned best to keep their mouths attached. 

There's a thought process behind it, he's sure, something about not going too fast because it's entirely possible she's never seen a real dick up close in her life and is only initiating this because she knows he won't, and scattered little notions like how this should be really fucking good for her, and if they're doing this he's at least not going to hurt her, and whatever the fuck else crosses his mind while her nails dig into his back hard enough to raise skin. She's not even trying to mark him.

There's a thought process behind it, he's not making that up, but when he unceremoniously shoves his hand down her jeans and her underwear and feels her slickness all around his fingers, he can't remember what the fuck compelled him to do it.

"Oh my God," she says, head tipping back, and her hips jolt to get closer to his fingers, "oh my God, please touch me," and the way her face looks, ready and almost desperate, makes him painfully aware of how hard he is, how much he wants to yank her pants off and give up on taking this step by step.

Instead, he takes a deep breath and slides a fingertip into her, watches her watch him intently. He tries to look a hundred percent more alert than he's actually feeling as his finger nudges in—she's so fucking tight, goddammit—and her mouth takes the shape of a small 'o,' eyes still fixed on his face.

"Ever had someone's fingers in you before?" he asks conversationally, adding a second finger, feeling her relax around them. If they're making this mistake, they should be damned well aware of what they're doing while they're doing it. 

She doesn't answer right away; she starts rocking her hips instead, loosening her jeans enough that his wrist drags them down every time it moves, and really soon her mouth falls open and her stomach and legs seize up in wait, holding her up.

"Yeah," Taylor says breathlessly, "not for a while, though," and there's another gasp, followed by a whimper. He crooks his fingers inside of her, assessing, and her thighs seem to tighten even more. "Don't—" she says when he moves a fraction, clutching his shoulder.

"Give me a pillow," he says, shifting his weight to his knees and slowing down, taking the chance to shove her jeans and underwear down over her hips and really get to drive his fingers into her, long and unhurried.

He doesn't actually keep a lot of pillows around; the few there were seem to have fallen over in that span of time Taylor was getting comfortable in his bed, but she somehow reaches one just stretching her arm over the side of the bed. It's a striking sight, Taylor with her head turned towards her stretched hand, momentarily distracted and completely unselfconscious being half-naked beneath him, trying to grasp the edge of a fallen pillow with the lower side of her body still tense and his fingers pumping in and out of her.

He pulls out for a second, spreading wetness up her pussy and distractedly rubbing her clit as he grabs the pillow and sets it under her back to prop her hips up. It's rushed, just comfortable enough for her legs to relax a little, and then he stretches out over her body again and kisses her as he works his fingers back inside her.

Almost right away when Taylor breaks away and says, "Don't need—you don't have to build up again—" and starts honest-to-god panting. There's sweat gleaming off her chest and she's giving off so much body heat he feels like he's still plastered to her when he props himself up higher, watching her as he speeds up.

"So you really have done this," he says. He's going for officially impressed, but most of it comes out as a low whisper.

"Yes," she hisses. "It wasn't—" she tries to add, "—wasn't this good, he wasn't as—" old, he assumes, or something more politically correct like experienced, and right—there, her muscles clench around him and she groans, "holy—" 

She keeps squeezing his fingers irregularly, eyes struggling to stay open, until he thumbs at her clit once, twice, and her lids shut down and she cries out, a rocky howl that sounds almost painful, ripped out of her throat.

He keeps touching her softly as she comes down from her orgasm, kissing her neck and her jaw and her mouth. He tries to drag her jeans down with his free hand, but they're too tight to go down that easy, so he stops touching her for a second to yank her pants to her feet and pull her underwear right down to her knees, enough to give him better access but still allow her to pull them up if she feels more exposed than she's comfortable with. The point of all of this is, actually, not scarring her for life.

She murmurs something quick that sounds a lot like, "That sounded possessive." He has no idea what she's referring to. He's already forgotten the last thing he said.

"What?" he asks. 

She shakes her head and doesn't clarify. "'mpty," she mutters, and he goes ahead and clasps her thighs—she whimpers, she fucking whimpers, hips bucking up almost shyly, and it takes him a second to register that she's turned on by his cool, slick fingers on her skin. He drags her toward the edge of the bed as he falls to his knees on the rug. "Oh my—"

"You want this?" he asks, and she lets her head fall back and spreads her legs wider in response. It shouldn't be a surprise when she kicks them off to the side, so hard they slide well out of his reach. "I'll take that as a yes," he says, laughing to hide how much he wants to make this about him. Besides, if he has the willpower to give her another couple of orgasms without reaching down and spilling all over the floor, he probably had the willpower to say no in the first place, and that's ten different kinds of messed up.

He kisses his way down from her navel, and she moans a word or two, sounds jumbled together until he recognizes them as n's and looks up to see her shaking her head, face completely unclear, conflicted, like he does want him to eat her out but she's not entirely sure.

"You don't have to be ready for everything," he says. "There are—" He pauses to consider. "—a _lot_ of things I would judge you for. That is not one of them." She doesn't answer, and he traces his tongue around her and licks a line up her pussy, tentative and careful and mostly just to get a taste of her before she whimpers in clear discomfort this time, before climbing back up on the bed and kissing her. He can feel her relax underneath him.

She doesn't say anything when he breaks away, but he keeps his eyes on her until at least she nods, smiling shakily, embarrassed. 

"Okay?" he says. She nods again, surer, and the thin, nervous line of her lips loosens when he pulls her up into his bed by the waist.

He holds himself up near her shoulder, and runs the back of his hand along her belly. Her nipples perk up as his knuckles bump over her ribs, and she bends her knee when he fits one of her tits inside the L of his thumb and forefinger, dragging the rest of his fingers over the underside of it. When he ducks his head and bites her collarbone, her foot drags up the glossy bedspread, making a long, soft sound. His mouth follows down the contour of her breasts, teeth scraping at the swell of them, and he licks around her nipple before sucking it into his mouth. 

His hand slides south then, palm closing over her pussy before pressing a couple of fingers down, spreading her open and smearing slickness all over. She moans through her nose, tinny and adorable, and he trails his mouth to her other tit, strewing kisses before catching her peak of his nipple between his teeth. She stills a little, cautious, and he bites down softly, running the flat of his tongue across it immediately afterwards and looking up until she opens her eyes, until it looks like she's loosened down.

Her mouth looks dark, bottom lip swollen from her teeth, shiny with spit, and kissing her is an inevitability more than anything else. He doesn't expect her to surge into it, doesn't expect her to arch her back and press herself against his fingers—it's probably an accident, but he moves them over her clit anyway, soft pressure around it for now, helping it build up.

She sighs into his mouth, and then there's a brief ripping sound, not really loud but still noticeable, and she hooks her calf around his leg, her heel digging into his inner thigh as she rolls her hips into his hand. 

He pulls away to make eye contact, watching her blink and try to hold his gaze as he slides two fingers in up to the first knuckle, feeling her out and retreating again. She makes a whiny sound in the back of her throat and shuts her eyes.

He adapts the cup of his hand to her, setting his thumb under her clit and keeping his fingers bent lower down, knuckles pressing lightly against her hole, just enough to make her feel like they might go in. He takes it slow, drawing shapes around her pussy, skirting around her clit until she grasps at the bedspread. Her stomach tenses, too, and so do her legs; they shift upwards, and the heel of her foot starts pressing up against his balls in a really not painful at all way, and he needs to—finish her. Finish her and go take care of himself.

He edges in on her clit, circling it rhythmically, working out just how much pressure and speed she needs by the briefness and noisiness of her breathing. It doesn't take long before her mouth falls open, taking in quick, shallow gulps of air. She bunches her hands around fabric when he pushes that rhythm a little higher, head tipped back and belly a quivering mess until she stills, hipbones jutting out, and her breath catches.

Her legs give, knees stretching out over the bedspread again, and he kneels up and slides off the bed. He hasn't been so glad to disentangle himself from a girl's body in his life. 

Of course, because she can't make it easy on him, the second his weight settles on the floor, she scrambles to sit up and reaches for him, clutching the hem of his t-shirt and yanking him in. He balances himself with a fist on the bed and sits down. His hand automatically goes for her hip, and he says, "What?" as casually as he can. It's not very casual at all, but at least his frustration doesn't come off as anger.

Her eyes shift down his body and stop at his crotch; she bites her lip nervously and shrugs. "Well," she says, "I mean, I can—" and reaches for his fly.

Before her hands get too close, he grabs her wrists and pins them to the pillow, over her head. "You're not ready for that," he says, and reaches for the edge of the bedspread, folding it over her. She's been playing confident all night, and he can see it starting to fade already. He doesn't want it to break down when her hand is on his dick.

"Oh, but I so am," she says, attempting to smirk. It's somewhat flattering, how hard she fails at it.

"That's the orgasms talking," he says, voice strained. "You're gripping that thing too tight."

"Lies," she says, and her fingers unclench over the fabric for about a second before she realizes she's not all that eager to let go of it. "White lies."

He looks at her for a moment, the way her hair is a complete mess on the pillow when she allows herself to lie back, her bare shoulders, bare arm holding the bedspread to her chest, the way one of her legs bends at the knee over the other. She holds onto the bedspread tighter when his eyes trace back over it, fist to her stomach, and he smiles at the gesture, laughs at the little moue on her face.

She bites her lip, catches his eye, and lifts the bedspread just enough to show him her upper body, from her lovely, adorable tits to her lower belly, the edge of the bedspread revealing hints of light hair.

"Okay," he says as she shrugs and covers herself again, "thanks for that."

"No problem," she says, and this time the smirk is real—small and shy, but real.

He snorts a laugh. "Just give me a few minutes," he says, "to take care of this," and heads to the bathroom.

When he gets back, she's sprawled across his bed, fast asleep under the sheets, bedspread pushed aside. Her jeans are on the floor by her feet, and the moonlight fakes a transparency through the sheets that makes it clear she's completely naked, that she was comfortable enough to go to sleep like that in his place, or desperate enough to become comfortable.

The right response, of course, would be to sleep with her. Literally sleep with her. It's clearly what she's expecting. It's not that he doesn't want to—and, if it were anybody else, he wouldn't doubt it for a second before climbing in—but it's Taylor, and she's set on interpreting everything he does a little too right. Waking up next to her may not be the right message to add to the pile of truly regrettable truths he's let her find out about him, about how he feels about her.

He takes a deep breath, pulls a dragging sheet over her shoulder, and decides to retire to the guest room and sleep alone there, give her some room to know better.

*

When he wakes up, she's gone, and there's a note on the fridge that says _Don't think this is over_ with a winky face next to it, followed by _See you sometime next week_.

Then, he sees the little girly, teenage red heart preceding the signed _T_ , and the guilt he'd been paddling off since he made out with Taylor in the middle of his living room back in November hits him at once, hard and loud and quickly leading into a migraine. 

The physical pain stays there through breakfast and a long, freezing walk. It's almost good; it's so awful he stops feeling guilty altogether. This is punishment enough.

The universe doesn't seem to think so, though, because he makes the enormously stupid mistake of walking into a very specific little restaurant, and bumping into the very specific someone he used to come here with. 

It's, truth be told, not as bad as it could be. It's a familiar face, and when they broke up, nobody threw anything, and apparently the headache has made him exhausted instead of cranky, because he's really not that bothered by this happenstance at all. Which is probably lucky for Minka Kelly, who hasn't talked to him in so long she's forgotten they weren't talking and motions him over.

Ten minutes later, he realizes maybe the only reason they weren't talking was that they didn't have a good enough reason to. His migraine fizzles out through the first half of their lunch, and by the end she's laughing bright and happy through a story about filming her scene in (500) Days of Summer, and stretching the lunch into coffee.

Minka's opening her packet of sugar when she says, "So what's this I hear about you and little Taylor Swift? Do I need to call the cops on you?"

"She's not actually underage," he points out.

Minka's eyes widen a little, full of mockery. "Ooh, defensive. If I remember correctly, that means I'm going to be hearing about your big, passionate affair in no time at all." He doesn't say anything. It's clearly a mistake, because Minka's smile fades as she adds, "Am I?"

"Don't ask," he says, shaking his head. He can't talk about this. He has the image of Taylor sprawled in his bed, naked and squirming underneath him burned in the front of his mind. It shouldn't be huge, but thinking about it makes it. It makes it seem big. He had sex with Taylor Swift. Little Taylor Swift, like Minka just called her. Jesus.

"Don't ask as in, 'Why are the press such assholes, I don't want to hear any more of these lies,' or don't ask as in, 'I am doing something very stupid and I don't want to talk about it'?"

"Which one would make you dislike me less?"

Minka presses her mouth into a thin line, nibbling at her upper lip, and chuckles. "Are you aware how much you don't need that kind of publicity?"

"That depends. How much of an idiot do you think I am?"

"I don't," Minka says, taking a brief sip of her cocoa, "actually." He raises his eyebrows. "I'm serious. You're selfish and weak," she says casually, like she's listing off ideas for dinner, "and you can be kind of tunnel-visiony, and you have severe filtering issues and you can be a massive jackass sometimes, but I've never doubted your ability to know what you're doing. That's usually where the jackass part comes from. You know you're being an asshole but you keep doing it anyway."

"I feel so warm and fuzzy inside now, thank you," John says, but there's no bite behind it. They never really had that big fight, so he figures she kind of deserves the chance to go off at him, and there's something about the way she looks at him that makes it all sound less like she thinks he's a lost cause. It's almost flattering.

"My pleasure," Minka says, smiling again. She actually does have the kind of smile that makes you feel warm. "You're not being an asshole to her on purpose, are you? I'm asking out of love."

"I'm sure you are," says John, "and no, not on purpose, I'm not."

"Good," says Minka, and stops pushing the topic. "So how's your year going?"

*

Unfortunately, the headache comes back full force on the walk back to his apartment. By the time he reaches his front door, he's debating between napping away the rest of the day or marathoning the last season of Mad Men. By the time he reaches his couch, he's settled on watching as much of it as he can fit in between now and the moment his head falls on the armrest by its own weight.

He rolls up a joint to help himself through it, and ten minutes later he starts rummaging between the couch cushions trying to relocate his lighter, which shows up along with Taylor's pink knitted hat. He relights the joint and takes one more long drag before texting her, `I found your hat`.

Taylor answers surprisingly fast, and unsurprisingly nonsensically. `Don't you dare FedEx it`? What the fuck does that mean?

`Why would I fedex a hat?` he sends back, then figures they can't really have this kind of conversation via text message and calls her instead.

"Are you okay?" he says when she picks up.

"What?" she says. After a pause, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm great. Why?"

"Because you just—" he starts to say, but she's talking over him already.

Her voice sounds legitimately authoritative, it's pretty weird. "Seriously, don't you dare FedEx that hat."

"Because of that," he says. "Did you have a bad experience with FedEx that I don't know about—because that would explain—"

"Are you drunk?" she asks.

"No," he says. "On my way to high."

She makes a little contemplative humming sound and asks, "How high would you say you are now?" Her voice is low and conspiratorial and goes straight to his dick. He rubs his eyes and wills it to stay down. He refuses to corrupt her through the phone until he's fully corrupted her in the flesh.

"Halfway through a joint," he says.

"Which is..." she prompts.

"Not very high at all." After a pause and another drag, he adds, "Yet."

"Okay," Taylor says, voice and pace of speech going back to normal. It doesn't stop being hot, but it's easier to not react to it when she's talking the way she usually does. He has experience making himself not react to that. "Okay, maybe that'll help. Listen very closely," she says, and pauses. And the pause goes on. And on. And on.

"...to your breathing?" he asks, pressing pause on his remote. To entertain himself, he grabs the hat, wraps it around his hand. It's a really bizarre shade of pink.

"I left my hat at your place."

"I can see that, you don't have to tell me."

"Shut up," she laughs. "No, okay, but that's like a—a _thing_. I have to get it back. It's a thing. Don't get rid of it, don't bring it anywhere, I have to go get it back. That's how it works."

"What the fuck are you talking about, Taylor," he drawls. If she can't make an effort to be coherent, neither can he.

Taylor keeps quiet for a couple of seconds, and then there's a sweet, tiny chuckle down the line, and she says, "Don't take fate away from me, John." She sounds like she's smiling. She sounds like she's aware she just said what she just said and she doesn't care, she just needs to say it, which is good, even if it's ridiculous. "There's a lot I can do without, but fate—fate is just. Fate is important to me. Let me have it."

"For the record, this is not called fate. This is called you attacked me in the middle of the night and I took your hat off because it looked stupid and then you stormed out and forgot to grab it back. It's not magic. It's cause and effect."

"Whatever," says Taylor, "just—"

"Don't FedEx it, I got it," John says. "I didn't plan to."

"Good. You can go back to whatever it is you're doing now," says Taylor, and he's about to tell her he's not doing anything because her little post-it gave him a headache and he can't when she adds, "I don't want to hear about it," hangs up, and spares them both a fight. 

See, now _that_ he could buy as fate. Or serendipity, or whatever.

He tosses the hat on the end table and presses play again.


End file.
